TOM TITUS -- Theater

Over its 3 1/2 decades of producing 10 or more productions a year,

South Coast Repertory has introduced local audiences to most of the

world’s great playwrights. The word “most” is applicable because one name

has been conspicuously absent.

The oversight is about to be remedied as SCR prepares to open Edward

Albee’s “A Delicate Balance” this weekend, filling the slot in its “great

American playwrights” series that so far has revived works by Tennessee

Williams (“A Streetcar Named Desire”) and Arthur Miller (“Death of a

Salesman” and “All My Sons”).

Albee, of course is best known for his 1962 drama “Who’s Afraid of

Virginia Woolf?” which inspired a superlative movie version in 1966. That

play, however, didn’t win him one of his three Pulitzer Prizes. These

came later with “Seascape,” “Three Tall Women” and “A Delicate Balance.”

It’s well nigh impossible to go through a high school drama program

without encountering Albee’s “The Zoo Story,” an intense one-act play.

“Tiny Alice” and “Everything In the Garden” are also among the

playwright’s significant body of work.

Five years ago, Albee became a Kennedy Center honoree, only the fourth

playwright to receive the lifetime achievement award after Williams,

Miller and Neil Simon (another playwright SCR has yet to “discover”).

President Clinton put it succinctly: “Edward Albee’s life epitomizes

the rebellious spirit of art. For over 40 years, his work has defied

convention and set a standard of innovation that few can match.”

For the SCR production, which focuses on a typical suburban couple

whose lives are thrown into turmoil by uninvited guests, director Martin

Benson is calling upon some local heavyweights -- Kandis Chappell,

Richard Doyle, Hope Alexander, Linda Gehringer, Nicholas Horman and Rene

Augesen. The show is in previews now and will will open its regular

engagement Saturday, running through Feb. 11.

Meanwhile, downstairs on the Second Stage, SCR is rediscovering

another playwright with a rebellious spirit, John Guare, with a reprise

production of “Bosoms and Neglect.” Although staged once before at SCR,

it’s a lesser known entity than his “The House of Blue Leaves” or “Six

Degrees of Separation,” both of which have been presented at South Coast

Repertory.

First produced on Broadway in 1979 -- for three performances -- the

play did much better when SCR tackled it two years later. The playwright

has revised his original script for the new production.

The play’s central figure, a woman trying to ward off cancer by waving

around a plastic statue of St. Jude -- is based quite literally on

Guare’s own mother. The first scene, he says, happened exactly as

written, and the woman who inspired it wasn’t exactly thrilled to see it

displayed on television in an opening night report.

“Bosoms and Neglect,” directed by David Chambers, will open Jan. 23 on

the Second Stage and plays through Feb. 25.

* TOM TITUS writes about and reviews local theater for the Daily

Pilot. His stories appear Thursdays and Saturdays.