THEATER AND FILM : Laguna Playhouse’s ‘Quilters’ Returns for Benefit to Send Troupe Abroad

Laguna Playhouse’s much-lauded “Quilters” production is back home again this week--before it takes off for yet another theater festival.

The frontier musical is back for a six-day benefit engagement beginning tonight at the Playhouse’s Moulton Theatre in Laguna Beach. But all performances are sold out, except the 8 p.m. performance Saturday. It’s $45, which includes a preshow dinner at the next-door Festival of Arts dining patio.

Proceeds from this week’s run go to an especially appropriate cause: To underwrite the 23-member “Quilters” contingent’s trip to compete late this month at an international community theater festival in Dundalk, Ireland.

“It’s strictly pay as you go,” said the Playhouse’s artistic director Douglas Rowe, who is heading the “Quilters” troupe that leaves May 25. “We need about $40,000, and that’s what we expect to net from (this week’s) run.”

The Laguna “Quilters” is already one of the county’s longest-running stage ventures and among the most honored community theater productions.

This version of Molly Newman’s and Barbara Damashek’s saga of seven U.S. frontier women first played the 418-seat Moulton Theatre in winter, 1987--a 3 1/2-week engagement that was one of the most successful, in box-office terms, in Moulton history. (The musical, which was originated at the Denver Center Theatre, was also staged in 1985 at Los Angeles’ Mark Taper Forum and in 1986 at Garden Grove’s Gem Theatre.)

In June, 1987, the same Laguna production walked off with top honors in a national competition held in Norman, Okla., by the American Assn. of Community Theatres. “Quilters” bested community productions from nine other U.S. regions.

As a result, the Laguna “Quilters” was picked to represent the United States at the 23rd annual international community theater festival at Dundalk, competing against troupes from England, Scotland and Wales.

Laguna will offer its full two-hour version of “Quilters” May 31 at Dundalk’s 500-seat playhouse (the U.S. festival version in June was a one-hour version). The festival will announce the winning troupe June 5.

Rowe said the Laguna troupe will also give two musical performances at Dundalk: One a potpourri of Broadway hit musicals, the other based on songs by Laguna’s own Mark Turnbull (the “Quilters” music director).

All seven members of the first Laguna “Quilters” cast are back. Karen McBride, a music teacher and Los Angeles Master Chorale member, plays the mother of the frontier clan. Playing her six daughters are Karen Angela, Colleen Dunn, Tricia Griffin, Carolyn Miller, Lisa Picotte and Laura Pryzgoda, most of whom have performed in previous Moulton Theatre musicals.

“It’s an exciting prospect for all of us,” said “Quilters” director Teri Ralston, who has performed versions of “Quilters” at the Mark Taper and with a Denver Center Theatre Co. touring group. “It’s also a little scary, since we’ll be there as this country’s representatives.”

Apparently, the Laguna “Quilters” isn’t about to fold yet. “We’re working on the idea of bringing it back later this year (to the Moulton),” Rowe said.

With a laugh he added: “I guess you can say we’re getting a lot of mileage out of it.”

MORE COMING ATTRACTIONS: Rowe has announced three of the productions penciled in for Laguna Playhouse’s 1988-89 season at the Moulton.

They are: county premieres of John Bishop’s “Murders of 1940s” (Oct. 27-Nov. 20); another comedy, James Kirkwood’s “Legends” (Jan. 19-Feb. 12), and the first staging of Mark Turnbull’s original musical “Call the Cops--the Art of Edouard Manet” (May 18-June 11). Turnbull’s work will be a sweeping look at the French Impressionist era, but focused on Manet (not on Georges Seurat, as was Stephen Sondheim’s “Sunday in the Park With George”).

The Sept. 8-Oct. 2 production will be a musical, while the March-April slot is to be filled by a comedy, Rowe said.

Meanwhile, in Garden Grove, artistic director Thomas Bradac has announced the Gem Theatre’s full new lineup. The West Coast premiere of Douglas Cohen’s musical “No Way to Treat a Lady” will lead off (Oct. 7 to Nov. 5, with previews beginning Sept. 30). The others: The third annual “A Child’s Christmas in Wales,” based on Dylan Thomas’ piece (Nov. 25 to Dec. 24); Rod Serling’s boxing saga “Requiem for a Heavyweight” (Jan. 20 to Feb. 18); Joan Micklin Silver’s musical “A . . . My Name Is Alice,” and Horton Foote’s drama “Lily Dale.” The spring dates for the Silver and Foote works, also county premieres, have not been announced.

South Coast Repertory Theatre has yet to announce its 1988-89 slate, but it has tossed out plenty of teasers. Mainstage prospects include the aforementioned “Sunday in the Park With George”; Alan Ayckbourn’s “A Chorus of Disapproval”; Athol Fugard’s “The Road to Mecca” and Edward Albee’s “Tiny Alice.”

Second Stage possibilities include premiering Mark Stein’s “At Long Last Leo,” which was given a NewSCRipts reading this year, and Eric Overmyer’s “In Perpetuity Throughout the Universe.” Two of the Second Stage works--still to be chosen--may be performed in “mini-repertory” by the same cast, SCR officials said.

Officials confirmed three other SCR “prospects” mentioned in a challenge-grant application now awaiting California Arts Council approval. Two are SCR-commissioned “epic-scale” works--one from David Henry Hwang set in Vietnam, the other from Ellen McLaughlin entitled “Infinity.”