WHY 'ONE FLEA SPARE'?: The Cripple Creek Theater's current attraction, "One Flea Spare," is Naomi Wallace's harrowing play set in 1665 London, in the time of the plague. Two aristocrats are quarantined in their once beautiful home. Despite an ever-present guard, a sailor and young girl break in, adding another month to the couple's confinement. Social, sexual, class and cultural boundaries are turned topsy-turvy.

It's rough going on the page and one wonders why Cripple Creek chose it.

"Well, it works on a number of levels," director Andrew Vaught said. "These very different people are trapped together as the world collapses around them. It's also a story of calamity causing social change. Who will come out on top? Look at our situation in New Orleans after Katrina. Everyone is scrambling to get as much as they can out of the situation.

"You can also look at the play as a good old-fashioned bodice-ripper. But the bottom line is that I think this play will speak to everyone in the city."

An interesting aspect to this production is that Vaught will again be directing his father, Charlie Vaught.

"Well, we never did the Little League thing," Vaught said. "But we did act together in '12 Angry Men.' He was Juror 8 and I was Juror 5 and we've gotten along much better since then." The family that plays together ...

The senior Vaught first acted with his son's theater company in the "debate" in Washington Square between Edwin Edwards and David Duke "and he's been in every play we've done since," the junior Vaught said. "It's been very nice for me, because he's actually good and good, mature actors aren't that easy to find."

"One Flea Spare" is being performed Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays at 8 p.m. through May 31 at the Convergence Center for the Arts, 2135 Magazine St. (near Jackson Avenue) where Cripple Creek performed "Waiting for Lefty." Tickets are $10. Call (504) 891-6815.

MR. BIGUENET: Novelist-turned playwright John Biguenet is off and running theatrically. His "Rising Water," developed with Southern Rep and the theater's most popular play to date, recently opened at the Maverick Theater in Fullerton, Calif., to reviews that are the stuff of a playwright's dream. Critic Eric Marchese, writing in the Orange County Register, concluded his rave with this paragraph:

"Because of Biguenet's skillful writing, which blends the real-life horrors of a disaster with the more prosaic, yet somehow more pressing, problems of married life, 'Rising Water' emerges as a great American play -- perhaps one of the first great plays of the 21st century."

The play's next production will be at the Vineyard Playhouse in Martha's Vineyard, opening June 18, followed by the Unicorn Theatre in Kansas City; Center Stage Theater in Santa Barbara; The Shadowlands Theatre in Ellenville, N.Y.; and Playwrights Theatre in Madison, N.J. Last month, Biguenet reports, the LSU/Swine Palace Theatre in Baton Rouge staged a reading of the play with African-American actors, "and it went beautifully."

Back home, Biguenet, Southern Rep and the Preservation Resource Center will host a "Play & Party" fund-raiser May 17 at 7:30 p.m. that will include the obligatory food, music and libations, plus a reading of several scenes from Biguenet's new play "Shotgun," which will open at Southern Rep in May, 2009. Artistic director Aimee Hayes will direct Donna Duplantier, Jamie Wax, Miles Babin and Lance Nichols in this sneak preview of "Shotgun," which deals with post-storm racial tensions and ties in with the PRC's "Shotgun Month."

To order tickets, which are $50, call (504)¤522-6545 or visit www.southernrep.com

SPEAKING OF LANCE NICHOLS: The busy stage and screen actor is offering an intensive six-week "Scene Study Workshop" at La Nuit Theatre, 2301 Soniat Street (corner of Freret). Classes will be held on Tuesdays beginning May 13 and run through June 17, 6 to 10 p.m. For more information, call (888)¤698-0201 or e-mail lnichol619@earthlink.net.

TULANE SUMMER LYRIC THEATRE: Single ticket sales to the three-musical Summer Lyric season go on sale Monday (May 12) at noon. The eclectic season features a rare production of Rodgers & Hart's classic musical "Pal Joey" with Broadway star Ian Carney in the title role of the nightclub heel toying with the affections of Elizabeth Argus, Katie Howe and Cynthia Owen, June 19-22; "Li'l Abner," with musical director Leonard Raybon abandoning his tuix for overalls in the title role, July 10-13 and "Oklahoma!" July 31-Aug. 3. All at Dixon Hall on the Tulane University Uptown campus. Call (504)¤865-5269 or visit the box-office Monday through Friday, Noon-5 p.m.

ON BROADWAY: New Orleans Center for the Creative Arts grad Mary Catherine Garrison, with substantial New York credits under her belt ("Rabbit Hole," "Assassins") has another in the just-opened Manhattan Theatre Club revival of Caryl Churchill's "Top Girls" at the Biltmore Theatre. Ben Brantley in The New York Times praised the entire cast, noting, "Ms. Garrison's girlishness with a sting feeds perfectly into Chaucer's Patient Griselda, the obedient victim of the some of the sickest spousal abuse in literary history ...

The Times has also confirmed an item printed here a month or so ago that Harry Connick Jr, will indeed star in a "new" musical comedy, "Nice Work If You Can Get It," with songs from the George and Ira Gershwin songbook and a new book by Joe DiPietro ("All Shook Up"). Kathleen Marshall, who did a bang-up job with Connick two years ago in "The Pajama Game" revival will direct and the show is expected to open in March. It would make a nice birthday present for a Theater Guy I know.

TRY-OUT TIME: Director Stacy Taliancich will hold auditions for the St. Philip Players' staging of Agatha Christie's "And Then There Were None" today, 2-5 p.m., at the Parishioner Senter, 6500 Kawanee Ave. in Metairie. Needed are eight men 20s-70s and three women, one in 20-30 age group and two in 40-70 range. "No one under 18, please," Taliancich asks. Auditioners should bring a current head shot and resume. Show dates are Aug. 8-10. Call (504)¤467-4423.The Wooster Group, a small, not-for-profit New York ensemble theater will be in New Orleans Monday through Wednesday working on a Tennessee Williams piece that will also include some video material shot here. They are looking for mature female actors: an African-American woman 55 and over; two women, 75 plus, thin, with a true New Orleans accent (which one?) and several middle-aged women in their 50s. They would be paid for shooting days, "although at a low rate, we don't have a lot of funding," said producer Cynthia Hedstrom. For more information, call her at (212) 966-9796 or e-mail chedstrom@thewoostergroup.org

The NORD Crescent City Lights Youth Theater's summer production of the Paul Williams' screen-to-stage musical "Bugsy Malone" will be held Monday at 6 p.m. at the NORD Ty Tracy Theatre in Gallier Hall, 545 St. Charles Ave., Lafayette Street entrance. Needed are young actors grades 4 through 12. Auditions are by appointment only, with applications available at the website, www.crescentcitylights.org or call theater founder/vocal director Julie Condy, (504) 650-1343. Her staff this summer includes director Sarah Singleton and the great choreographer Lula Elzy. "Bugsy" plays July25-Aug. 1.

http://blog.nola.com/davidcuthbert/2008/05/theater_guy_extra_extra_may_10.html