Local theaters gear up for 2006

readyFor local theater companies, New Year’s Day is Saturday. That’s when the 2006 slate of upcoming stage productions officially gets under way.

As usual, South Coast Repertory will be the first to usher in the new year, this time with the latest in a long line of world premieres. This one is entitled “The Further Adventures of Hedda Gabler” and it bows in this weekend on SCR’s Julianne Argyros Stage (550 Town Center Drive, Costa Mesa) playing an abbreviated run through Jan. 29.

Now, those familiar with Henrik Ibsen’s original “Hedda Gabler” are aware that “further adventures” are highly improbable, since Hedda offed herself in the last scene of the original. However, Tony-winning playwright Jeff Whitty (“Avenue Q”) has come up with an original take on Hedda and a few other tragic literary heroines in this offbeat comedy. Bill Rauch is directing with South Coast favorite Susannah Schulman in the title role.

Speaking of Ibsen, the real thing will be on display starting Jan. 27 at the Newport Theater Arts Center. That’s when Frank McGuiness’ adaptation of Ibsen’s “A Doll’s House” opens, having won a 1997 Tony for best revival of a play.

David Colley is directing the classic drama of a repressed young wife who finally musters the courage to alter the course of her life. Performances are scheduled through Feb. 26 at Newport Theater Arts Center, 2501 Cliff Drive, Newport Beach.

For a decided change of pace, on the same evening, Vanguard University opens a more lighthearted production titled “Blazing Guns at Roaring Gulch,” a vaudeville-style melodramatic western, which culminates in a face-to-face gunfight between two long-lost twin brothers -- played by the same actor. The guns will blaze through Feb. 5 at the Costa Mesa college, 55 Fair Drive.

South Coast Repertory will be back in action Feb. 3 with the American premiere of “Hitchcock Blonde,” written and directed by Terry Johnson. The dark secret that caused legendary director Alfred Hitchcock to obsess over beautiful golden-haired ladies in jeopardy is the subject of Johnson’s treatise, which will play through March 12 on the Segerstrom Stage. The cinematic mystery cuts back and forth between 1919 on a London sound stage and 1959 during the filming of that unforgettable shower scene from “Psycho.”

The lesser-known plays of Lanford Wilson (author of “The Hot L Baltimore” and “Talley’s Folly”) will be examined beginning Feb. 10 for two weekends in the Orange Coast College Drama Lab Studio.

The Costa Mesa Civic Playhouse will be running Wilde beginning Feb. 24 when Oscar Wilde’s “An Ideal Husband” takes the stage at 611 Hamilton St. Victorian wit and morality intertwine in this expose of a high government official. Performances run through March 26.

Vanguard returns to the spotlight Feb. 24 with “The Boys Next Door,” which focuses on four men with varying degrees of mental and emotional disability who share a home and their lives. Susan Berkompas is directing the show, which runs through March 5.

UC Irvine’s drama department has a doubleheader scheduled for the first two weekends in March. First up, in the Studio Theater, is Tennessee Williams’ “Orpheus Descending” (March 2-11), a seldom-produced drama about a drifter musician in a small Southern town. Moviegoers may know this story by its cinematic title, “The Fugitive Kind.” Amanda McRaven is directing.

Just a week later (March 10 through 18), Cole Porter’s magnum opus, “Kiss Me, Kate,” arrives in the Claire Trevor Theater at UCI under the direction of Robert Cohen. This hit musical from the late 1940s borrows from Shakespeare’s “The Taming of the Shrew” for its story line and spotlights a plethora of classic Porter numbers from “Too Darn Hot” to “Brush Up Your Shakespeare.”

More classical theater is on tap in March when Orange Coast College produces the stage version of Dostoyevsky’s epic novel “The Brothers Karamazov,” directed by David Scaglione. The show will run from March 16 to 26 in OCC’s Drama Lab Theater.

Famed movie director William Friedkin (“The Exorcist,” “The French Connection”) will bring his staging skills to South Coast Repertory for “The Man From Nebraska,” a Pulitzer Prize finalist drama of a Midwesterner seeking a spiritual rebirth in England. Performances are scheduled from March 12 to April 2 on the Argyros stage.

With the likes of Williams, Wilde, Ibsen and Dostoyevsky to draw from, and director Friedkin along for good measure, the first three months of 2006 should be intriguing for local theatergoers.

* TOM TITUS reviews local theater for the Daily Pilot. His reviews appear Fridays.

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