Shakespeare in Southern California

The Southern California Shakespeare scene continues to be dominated by two Globes: the relatively well endowed, nationally respected Old Globe Theatre in San Diego, and the professionally improving but still struggling Equity-waiver Globe Playhouse in Hollywood. Between these spheres in 1978 the offerings were, characteristically, as sporadic in frequency as they were varied in style, substance, and levels of professionalism. Almost all of the Shakespeare between the Globes is centered in the Los Angeles metropolitan area. Within the city the primary event is the annual Los Angeles Shakespeare Festival, whose production this summer was a musical adaptation of A Midsummer Night's Dream. Again this year the Royal Shakespeare Company toured academic communities under the auspices of Santa Barbara professor Homer Swander's Actors in Residence (AIR) program. In downtown Los Angeles, the well-to-do Center Theatre Group, comprising the Ahmanson and Mark Taper Theatres (in addition to the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion), let another year go by with no Shakespearean production. It must be noted, however, that the Taper is currently in the midst of plans to offer in spring 1979 a unique production of The Tempest. Area high school and college students will be invited not only to attend performances with postplay discussions, but also, perhaps, to observe pre-production activity. This community-related enterprise was another Swander inspiration, and it will also operate through the offices of his Actors in Residence program. The remaining examples of Shakespeare in the Los Angeles area were random offerings of local theatres, most of which are small houses operating under the Equity waiver. During the year these companies offered a Richard III, a Taming of the Shrew, a Hamlet, a Twelfth Night, a Much Ado About Nothing, a Measure for Measure, and two Tempests. R. Thad Taylor's Shakespeare Society of America continued to thrive in his Globe Playhouse in Hollywood. This year he produced ten plays in his long-range program of presenting the entire canon, in addition to such periodic diversions as The Boys From Syracuse, two operas (Romeo and Juliet and The Merry Wives of Windsor), and a thesis play, which Taylor himself wrote and directed, called Shakespeare's Manuscripts? Taylor, who has already received a Los Angeles Drama Critics Circle Award for his effort to produce the thirty-eight plays (including The Two Noble Kinsmen) in succession, is nearing the realization of his dream. As the year came to a close, the SSA was presenting its twenty-eighth successive play, with firm plans to complete the canon by the middle of October 1979. The Globe Playhouse consists of a reasonably conjectured half-scale replica of Shakespeare's Globe stage, complete with inner stage, upper chamber, and central thrust platform with trapdoor-all constructed within a corrugated steel warehouse located just off Hollywood's garish Santa Monica Boulevard. The regular patron of Taylor's Globe productions soon becomes accustomed to such inherent distractions as the hammering of rain on the thin metal roof of the building or the periodic wailing of sirens from the reallife street drama outside. With a little effort and experience, however, these distractions can be resisted, and the viewer rewarded with the rare phenomenon of Shakespearean theatre in the relatively natural environment of the replica stage. It is not necessary to rehearse in this review the many hazards-logistic and professional, not to mention aesthetic-which attend Taylor's endeavor to perform the canon on schedule and in these circumstances. Let it suffice to reassert what has been declared in previous SQ reviews-that Taylor's mission has already achieved remarkable results in heightening community awareness of Shakespeare's vitality in today's theatre. Moreover, the SSA presentations have shown consistent professional improvement. One approaches a Globe Playhouse performance prepared to make the necessary allowances for low-budget, volunteer-staffed, small-theatre production. Occasionally such allowances are warranted, but more often than not during the past year Taylor's theatre has been able to overcome its handicaps with surprising professional strength and verve. The Globe's first selection this year (in January) was, appropriately, The Winter's Tale. Under John Megna's direction, the production was charming and lucid, with one notable exception. In the crucial opening scene, Megna had Hermione (Sarah Saltus) literally "paddling palms and pinching fingers" in her exhortations to Polixenes to extend his stay in Leontes' kingdom. By choosing to portray this action unambiguously Megna immediately settled the question of the motivation of Leontes' jealousy; but in so doing he raised the troublesome additional problem of reconciling this intimation of Hermione's infidelity with her otherwise devoted character. Our in-