South Coast Repertory

Shame and the British. They go together like tea and crumpets, Sandhurst and Sid Vicious.  But South Coast Repertory's broad staging of Alan Ayckbourn's exercise in indignity, “Absurd Person Singular,” makes you yearn wistfully for more cheeky snaps of Prince Harry in Vegas. Ayckbourn's set-up is simple genius: Over three acts, we follow three couples at three Christmas parties in as many years, all seen from various kitchens. At the top, boorish entrepreneur Sidney (JD Cullum)

Eli (played by rising theater star Seth Numrich) is an openly gay high school student who has been transplanted from the San Francisco Bay Area to Iowa after the tragic death of his father. His English professor mother (a gritty Wendy vanden Heuvel) has accepted a job in the Midwest and is eager to start a new life with her son. Eli, feeling like the freak newcomer at his school, resents her for inflicting this culture shock on him but even more he resents her for trying to be happy.

The new 2012-13 season at South Coast Repertory in Costa Mesa is scheduled to feature recent comedies by Stephen Adly Guirgis and David Henry Hwang, as well as a world-premiere work by playwright Noah Haidle. The season is also to feature plays by Sarah Ruhl, Bill Cain and Samuel D. Hunter. The season is the first to be selected by Marc Masterson , who took over as the company's artistic director in 2011. Guirgis' "The Mother... with the Hat" (Jan. 6 to 27) is tol make its local debut in a production directed by Michael John Garcés.

Dana Delany plays a calculating politician's wife in Beau Willimon's "The Parisian Woman," set in contemporary Washington, "inspired" by Henri Becque's "La Parisienne" of 1885. The world premiere production, co-starring Steven Weber, begins previews Sunday at South Coast Repertory and runs through May 5. The two-time Emmy winner also stars as acerbic medical examiner Dr. Megan Hunt in ABC's procedural "Body of Proof," now in its third season. Beau Willimon has a pretty dim view of people in politics.

Southern California is famous for being ahead of the national curve -- in styles, fads and unenviable crises. And right now, the region's largest institutional theaters are serving as a crystal ball for leadership concerns affecting nonprofit theaters throughout the country. I'm referring, of course, to Center Theatre Group, the Geffen Playhouse, South Coast Repertory, La Jolla Playhouse and the Old Globe, all of which are at crucial crossroads. The founders or guiding spirits of these prestigious theaters have left, are on the verge of leaving or are in a quandary about whether to make an exit at such a precarious historical moment.

South Coast Repertory announced Thursday that it aims to name a new artistic director in time for the season that begins in September, succeeding artistic director Martin Benson and producing artistic director David Emmes, the co-founders who have led the acclaimed Costa Mesa theater since 1964. Benson, 72, and Emmes, 71, won't be retiring, the theater said in a statement, but will continue under the title of founding directors, advising their successor and taking "an active role" in finding and developing the new plays that have been South Coast's leading claim to fame.

Main Stage: * "The Philanderer" by George Bernard Shaw. Opens Friday, plays through Oct. 10. * "The Piano Lesson" by August Wilson, Oct. 15-Nov. 21. Part of series chronicling decade-by-decade the African American experience in the 20th century. This play, which won the 1990 Pulitzer Prize, is set in the 1940s. * "The Hollow Lands" by Howard Korder, Jan. 7-Feb. 13. A man in search of the American dream sets out from New York in 1815 to cross the nation. * "All My Sons," by Arthur Miller, Feb.

Eight years ago, Julia Cho came to South Coast Repertory for the first time. She was a novice author, still in grad school, and excited to have her play, "99 Histories," read at the Pacific Playwrights Festival. Her visit was "amazing," she recalls. "I couldn't believe they were going to fly me to Costa Mesa from New York and put me up in a hotel, let alone put on my play." The experience also proved to be "a little intimidating," she says. "I was glad to be there, but I wasn't sure I belonged with all the older, more established playwrights."

The spectacle of Charlie digging into a family-size bucket of fried chicken is one of the sadder sights in "The Whale," Samuel D. Hunter's mordantly funny, bitterly angry and ultimately deeply moving portrait of a morbidly obese man stuffing himself to death after his lover's death. As played by Matthew Arkin (with fleshy prosthetics and makeup wizardry adding elephantine girth to the actor's medium build), Charlie is willfully drowning in his own flab - nearly 600 pounds of it. But please don't get the idea that this play, having its West Coast premiere at South Coast Repertory under the direction of Martin Benson, is setting up a situation that could be resolved by the dictatorial intervention of celebrity fitness trainer Jillian Michaels.

Across the street from the Pacific Symphony's performing space at the Orange County Performing Arts Center is South Coast Repertory, the county's other main, home-grown arts organization. Its reputation exceeds the Pacific Symphony's--the theater received a Tony Award in 1988--yet ticket prices there for main-stage productions appear to be in line with other regional theater companies around the country.

"Smokefall" appears to be Noah Haidle's version of "Our Town. " Nearly every American playwright has one, but most keep them hidden in desk drawers. This addition to the Thornton Wilder 2.0 collection, however, has been honored with an attentive production, directed by Anne Kauffman at South Coast Repertory (in a shared world premiere with Chicago's Goodman Theatre). Those with a penchant for homespun elegy playfully whipped up may enjoy "Smokefall," but the work is really a collection of derivative themes in search of a fleshed-out drama.

The spectacle of Charlie digging into a family-size bucket of fried chicken is one of the sadder sights in "The Whale," Samuel D. Hunter's mordantly funny, bitterly angry and ultimately deeply moving portrait of a morbidly obese man stuffing himself to death after his lover's death. As played by Matthew Arkin (with fleshy prosthetics and makeup wizardry adding elephantine girth to the actor's medium build), Charlie is willfully drowning in his own flab - nearly 600 pounds of it. But please don't get the idea that this play, having its West Coast premiere at South Coast Repertory under the direction of Martin Benson, is setting up a situation that could be resolved by the dictatorial intervention of celebrity fitness trainer Jillian Michaels.

The morbidly obese protagonist of "The Whale," the latest play by Samuel Hunter running at South Coast Repertory in Costa Mesa, weighs close to 600 pounds, scarfs meatball subs and hasn't left his dingy apartment for months. Creating the character of Charlie has been a technical challenge for the play's production team, which includes several costume fitters and an Academy Award-winning makeup artist. By far the biggest challenge belongs to actor Matthew Arkin. For eight performances a week, he must wear a 30-pound costume - he refuses to call it a fat suit - that is made out of Lycra, nylon, micro foam beads and foam sculpted from king-sized pillows.

Words aren't the only thing that gets lost in translation in "Chinglish," David Henry Hwang's tangy cross-cultural comedy of ideas set in the Chinese city of Guiyang. Manners and mores are equally susceptible to misinterpretation when an American businessman with a checkered past tries to redeem himself and his family's sign-making business by dog paddling into the "greatest pool of untapped consumers history has ever known. " The play, which had a modest run on Broadway last season and is now at South Coast Repertory in a tiptop co-production with Berkeley Repertory Theatre, was underappreciated in New York.

"The Mother… With the Hat" is not the actual title of the exhilarating Stephen Adly Guirgis play now at South Coast Repertory, but it's the best I can do without bringing down the strong arm of the censor. Hard as it might be for casual cursers to believe, naughty words still have the power to offend. Guirgis knows this on a deeper level than most. His characters throw the profanity equivalent of Molotov cocktails at one another. They're foulmouthed artists, spinning obscenely colorful invective to inflict as much damage as possible on their targets.

Shame and the British. They go together like tea and crumpets, Sandhurst and Sid Vicious.  But South Coast Repertory's broad staging of Alan Ayckbourn's exercise in indignity, “Absurd Person Singular,” makes you yearn wistfully for more cheeky snaps of Prince Harry in Vegas. Ayckbourn's set-up is simple genius: Over three acts, we follow three couples at three Christmas parties in as many years, all seen from various kitchens. At the top, boorish entrepreneur Sidney (JD Cullum)

The new 2012-13 season at South Coast Repertory in Costa Mesa is scheduled to feature recent comedies by Stephen Adly Guirgis and David Henry Hwang, as well as a world-premiere work by playwright Noah Haidle. The season is also to feature plays by Sarah Ruhl, Bill Cain and Samuel D. Hunter. The season is the first to be selected by Marc Masterson , who took over as the company's artistic director in 2011. Guirgis' "The Mother... with the Hat" (Jan. 6 to 27) is tol make its local debut in a production directed by Michael John Garcés.

They are the kind of moments that, when we brush against them accidentally, make us want to look away: An eager young student, confronting a condescending mentor. An estranged husband, stopping by to see his wife and -- after pleasantries -- browbeating her over what she's telling their friends. Two ex-lovers, now married to other people, reconnecting uncomfortably and circling like tigers. The characters move from small talk to awkward terseness to full-on combat in a disturbingly life-like way. Donald Margulies, the playwright who created these characters and their conflicts, doesn't really take sides.