The Past Is Best Left Forgotten

Blast of trumpets. Drum roll, please.

The year 1991 was-- ta-dah! --a memorable one for Orange County theater.

Sorry. Let’s take that over.

Blast of trumpets. Drum roll, please.

The truth is 1991 was pretty forgettable.

Except for a few standout productions and the Grove Shakespeare Festival’s backstage summer of mayhem, nothing could compete for drama with living room telecasts of the Persian Gulf War, the crumbling of the Soviet Union and the hearings on Judge Clarence Thomas.

It was the year Shirley MacLaine turned up at the Celebrity Theatre in a one-woman show and did not claim she was reincarnated.

It was the year George Burns turned up at the Orange County Performing Arts Center and said that at 95 he was glad to turn up anywhere.

It was the year Dorothy Lamour turned up in a Sondheim revue at the Grand Dinner Theatre and never learned her lines--so she read them from a lectern.

It was the year a handful of celebrities turned up at the Grove for a one-night benefit and could have used name tags.

It was the year South Coast Repertory staged “Kiss of the Spider Woman,” a Latino prison play about a gay transvestite and a Marxist revolutionary for a straight, white, middle-class audience--and nobody complained to the Costa Mesa City Council.

It was the year the Costa Mesa Civic Playhouse did not upset Catholic fundamentalists, as it had in 1990 by doing a controversial play about a crazed nun.

It was the year the Costa Mesa Civic Playhouse did not upset anybody by doing anything controversial.

It was, above all, the year of the resignations.

Robert Cohen resigned after 21 years as chairman of the UC Irvine theater department (and was succeeded by Stephen Barker).

Douglas Rowe resigned after 15 years as either managing or artistic director of the Laguna Playhouse (and was succeeded by Andrew Barnicle).

Thomas F. Bradac got the boot after 12 years as artistic director of the Grove (and his departure was called a resignation).

It was the year the Grove board became awfully upset when the truth came out about its treatment of Bradac (who has been succeeded, temporarily, by Jules Aaron).

It was the year Grove officials accused Bradac’s associates of currying favor with the actors by giving them a $700 overdose of M&Ms.;

It was the year three dozen Grove actors objected to Bradac’s ouster. (They separately denied overdosing on M&Ms.;)

It was the year large crowds turned out to see three rousing Shakespeare productions at the Grove, despite the sour internal rift.

It was the year the Garden Grove City Council reversed course and befriended the Grove, giving it a few bucks and a promise of more, but no M&Ms.;

It was the year Bradac announced the formation of a new Shakespearean company at Chapman University with several Grove defectors.

It was the year David Emmes and Martin Benson did not resign as co-leaders of SCR and were not accused of feeding M&Ms; to anyone.

It was the year the Alternative Repertory Theatre went mainstream, belying its name but filling its seats.

It was the year the Orange County Coalition of the Theatre Arts folded up the folding chairs in its 38-seat venue and quietly disappeared.

It was the year the Orange County Black Actors Theatre chose to rebuild, and nobody has heard from them since.

It was the year “You Can’t Take It With You” took SCR box-office honors, but “Heartbreak House” took the critics’ hearts.

It was the year “Custer’s Last Band” won first prize in SCR’s annual play competition, got a staged reading and isn’t likely to be heard from again--at least not at SCR.

It was the year last year’s prizewinner, “Pirates,” got a production at SCR and isn’t likely to be heard from again--period.

It was the year “El Dorado” got a production at SCR and you wondered why it was heard from in the first place.

It was the year “Sight Unseen” didn’t win any SCR prizes but was the theater’s best new play by far.

It was the year Douglas Rowe returned to acting full time and put on the finest performance this reviewer has seen of the Narrator in “Our Town.”

It was the year Alan Mandell came to the county to do Shylock in “The Merchant of Venice” and put on a performance filled with indelible touches.

It was the year Daniel Bryan Cartmell demonstrated once again that he is the most underrated classical actor around.

It was the year all three did their stuff for the Grove Shakespeare Festival.

It was the year “Grand Hotel” checked into the Orange County Performing Arts Center but so did “Meet Me in St. Louis.”

It was the year “Les Miserables” checked into the Center and set a box-office record for Broadway musicals there.

It was the year “City of Angels” checked into the Center with a better production than the one on Broadway. Really.

It was the year “Jerome Robbins’ Broadway” checked out of the Center to nobody’s great regret.

It was the year the Irvine Barclay Theatre’s first full season hatched little, if anything, in the way of drama.

It was the year the Laguna Playhouse and the Fullerton Civic Light Opera wrangled over stage rights to “Big River” and both ended up doing productions.

It was the year the Playhouse canceled its promised summer festival.

It was the year Elysium Theatricals transferred “Burn This” from Laguna Beach to Garden Grove and got burned at the box office.

It was the year the Irvine Civic Light Opera launched its first season at the Barclay and waffled between the adventurous (“Pacific Overtures”) and the unadventurous (“The Music Man”).

It was the year UCI produced a top-notch reconception of Bertolt Brecht’s “The Caucasian Chalk Circle” and a more ballyhooed but less satisfying update of “West Side Story.”

It was the year a poet and a mountain came to the Backstage Theatre with bravura productions of “The Belle of Amherst” and “K2.”

It was the year a delicate revival of “The Glass Menagerie” proved robust at the ART box office.

It was the year the Way Off Broadway Playhouse confirmed again that its productions are the theatrical equivalent of “The Rocky Horror Show.”

It was the year “Steel Magnolias” was staged at three small theaters, which was at least two times too many.

It was the year “South Pacific” was staged once in a major production--and once was more than enough.

It was the year “The Little Shop of Horrors” was staged too many times to mention.

It was the year “Oklahoma!” was staged with canned music by a new light opera company--and technical snafus turned the production a cappella.

Finally, it was the year the Cirque du Soleil made its debut in the county with a display of showmanship that put everything else in the shade--except for H. Norman Schwarzkopf, Boris Yeltsin and Anita Hill, who were all on TV.

Blast of trumpets. Drum roll, please. Curtain.