STAGE / NANCY CHURNIN : Neil Simon’s ‘Rumors’ Evolves at the Old Globe

Just as rumors have a way of changing from day to day, so too does Neil Simon’s script for “Rumors,” now playing to capacity, plus 86 temporary seats that extend to the very stage of the Old Globe Theatre. And it will continue to change, the playwright said Wednesday, until the last two weeks of the run, when he will freeze the farce so that actors can get comfortable with the work in time for its Broadway opening at the Broadhurst Theatre Nov. 17.

Some people may think the work comes easily to the most commercially successful playwright in America today. It just ain’t so, Simon said--not even after 23 plays in 27 years.

“Being facile is impossible. I think every successful play I’ve had is successful because it was rewritten well.”

He chose the Globe to debut his play, Simon said, because the movie producers and stars who inevitably turn up in the 2,071-seat audiences at the Ahmanson in Los Angeles, where he lives, insisted on judging his works in progress as finished plays. Here, the playwright reports himself satisfied that he got the atmosphere he wanted.

“What’s wonderful here is the lack of pressure. There are smart audiences here, but they are prepared to see a work in progress. And the fact that it is a work in progress is even reflected in the reviews.”

Most theaters in town cautiously try out new plays after they have established an audience that will stick with them from dependable to adventurous fare. When San Diego State University debuts “wild coast,” a world premiere about South Africa opening today, it will be a way of reaching out for a new, desperately needed audience in the wake of a theater boom that has left university theaters hurting.

“San Diego State used to be one of the few theaters in town,” said Peter Larlham, an associate professor at San Diego State University who is directing “wild coast.”

“Nowadays there are so many professional theaters in town, a lot of people will go see theater where it can be produced more lavishly and professionally. The Drama Department is trying to figure out how to attract audiences to university work. We’re not out to make a great deal of money, we’re out to cover costs. But to do that we have to develop an audience interested in what young people do.”

Larlham reached back to his own South African past to get “wild coast” going. A 17-year teaching veteran of the University of Natal in Durban, the British-born Larlham solicited a script from one of his former students, Carol Kaplan, a South African now in the graduate playwrighting program at Yale School of Drama.

The story describes the tensions that build when two couples, one all white and one with a white partner and a colored (the South African word for mixed blood) partner, meet at a campsite in Transkei, the black homeland granted independence by the South African government.

It also reflects the kind of real-life dilemmas that led Larlham to leave South Africa with his wife and children.

“I had a group of students who were going to graduate and one was Zulu and the others were white. They were in the same department doing the same plays. After graduation, the white men had to join the army and the black man had to go back to his home. The situation could arise where they would have to control him in a disturbance. It is the most terrible civil war for people who are born there, who have to live there and have no place to go. There is no solution to the immediate situation except violence, and that horrifies me most of all.”

One would imagine that the mood would be a little brighter at the Bowery Theatre after finding its modestly produced little gem, “Danny and the Deep Blue Sea,” nominated by the San Diego Critics Circle for best production and the show’s star, Erin Kelly, as best actress alongside heavyweight contenders from the Old Globe, La Jolla Playhouse and the San Diego Repertory Theatre. Ah, but does recognition of excellence translate into financial support? The Bowery is still trying to raise $100,000 to finance its move from its existing location, frowm which it will be evicted some time after its final show of the season, “Bloody Poetry”--which features Kelly--closes Nov. 9. Much hope for financing the move to a new location in the Gaslamp Quarter is pinned on a fund-raising party to be held at the home of actor Kurt Reichert and his wife, Betty, Oct. 11. But, so far, response to the event has not been overwhelming.

“It’s tough for us,” said Managing Director Mickey Mullany. “We’re making headway, but anything can happen.”

“Glengarry Glen Ross,” David Mamet’s Pulitzer-Prize winning play that Jack O’Brien, artistic director of the Old Globe Theatre once said the Old Globe wouldn’t produce because of its profanity, is being readied for its San Diego premiere at the San Diego Repertory Theatre Wednesday.

According to the Rep, there will be no disclaimer outside the theater warning people of the off-color words used by Mamet’s ruthless real-estate characters, as there was when the Old Globe produced “Orphans,” and as there was in Dallas, where the Dallas Theater Center produced “Glengarry Glen Ross” last year.

The Rep is planning a seminar Monday at 7 p.m. called “The Business of Ethics: Mamet’s Glengarry Glen Ross.” Visiting UC San Diego professor Carey Harrison (son of actor Rex Harrison), will speak about the work as literature; Rick Snyder of Snyder Investments, will talk about the real life of real estate agents and new associate producer Walter Schoen will address the touchy issue of the language.