‘Travels’ Gets Good Mileage : Laguna Production Packs Greene’s Story With 4 Actors and No Baggage

LAGUNA BEACH — When Scottish theater director Giles Havergal came across Graham Greene’s 1969 novel, “Travels With My Aunt,” he was surprised that the famous British novelist gave him permission to adapt it for the stage.

“I actually didn’t think he would,” Havergal said. “He had a tremendous love of the theater, but his own plays hadn’t done well. I think he found it rather ironical that adaptations of his books worked much better.”

Havergal’s version of “Travels With My Aunt,” directed by Richard Stein, begins previews Tuesday at the Laguna Playhouse Moulton Theater in Laguna Beach, launching the theater company’s 78th season.

“Travels” had its world premiere in 1989 at the Citizens’ Theatre in Glasgow, which the Oxford-educated Havergal, 59, has headed with two longtime colleagues since 1970. Greene, who died in 1991, never saw the show.

But Greene did read and approve the script. That was less surprising, Havergal adds, perhaps because he took every line in the play straight from the novel.

“There isn’t a word in the show that Greene didn’t write,” he said in a recent telephone interview from London, where his theatrical career often takes him.

Stein notes: “Giles has a knack for pulling out the crucial episodes and bringing them to life on stage through a concoction of multiple roles. It’s not the first time multiple roles have been done. But the way it’s done here is unique.”

The critics have been impressed.

When “Travels” made its West Coast debut earlier this year in San Francisco at the American Conservatory Theater, they hailed Havergal’s “quicksilver stage language” and his theatrical “genius.”

In London’s West End, where “Travels” ran for two years following the Glasgow premiere, the show won a 1993 Olivier Award for “best entertainment.” And in New York, where it ran off-Broadway for six months in 1995, drama critic Ben Brantley of the New York Times hailed it as an “enchanting adaptation” that “translates narrative zeal into an astonishingly precise. . .theatrical language.”

The novel, set in the 1960s, tells the gently satiric story of timid, middle-aged banker Henry, who has just retired to a quiet life of gardening. But he is suddenly confronted by his globe-trotting Aunt Augusta, who represents everything traumatic to milquetoasts: libertine sex, lots of drugs and, as usual in a Greene novel, shady people and espionage.

The stage adaptation, which Stein calls “an actor’s delight,” involves an all-male cast of four who get to play multiple roles that bend genders and even species (one role is canine). Moreover, all four get to play Henry.

Stein has cast Ron Boussom, a South Coast Repertory founding artist, who portrays 11 characters; Howard Shangraw, another SCR regular, who plays only two (but they are major, Henry and Aunt Augusta); Tom Shelton, a playhouse regular, who does nine; and newcomer Christopher Utley, who does six.

Greene regarded his best-selling novel strictly as “an entertainment,” not in the same league with his serious writing. Yet “Travels With My Aunt” transcends light entertainment, Stein says. It turns into “a journey of self-discovery,” he says, about a man who comes to terms with a seemingly alien world.

Havergal agrees: “It’s really about tolerance.” As in all Greene novels, there is “a philosophical spine” to the story, he says. An underlying theme deals with the balance between hedonism and restraint and the price paid for too much of either.

“I think the charade element of the guys playing all the parts captures the wonderful atmosphere of cheekiness about the book,” he notes. “I’ve adapted the book with the greatest respect. I hope it’s a homage that reflects the book’s inner vitality and life force. It needs a larky theater presentation.”

Havergal adds, however, that the show is “absolutely not camp.”

“Aunt Augusta is an extreme character that some people might describe as campy,” he says. “But camp is form without content--that’s Kenneth Tynan’s definition, which is the best I know--and this show is crammed full of content.”

In fact, the Laguna staging should have more content than usual. Material cut from the original Glasgow production for the London and New York productions has been restored.

“The script changes all the time, depending on the theater,” Havergal says. “I’m not bothered by that.

“In Brussels, they changed the way the parts are handed round among the actors. And right now, there’s a Hungarian version being done in Budapest with a woman, actually a famous comedienne, playing Aunt Augusta.

“I find the variations endlessly fascinating.”

* “Travels With My Aunt” previews Tuesday and Wednesday and opens Thursday at the Laguna Playhouse Moulton Theater, 606 Laguna Canyon Road, Laguna Beach. Ends Sept. 28. $29-$35; $18 previews. (714) 497-2787.