THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Thursday, July 7, 1994 TAG: 9407070040
SECTION: DAILY BREAK PAGE: E1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY KEITH MONROE, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Long : 103 lines
THEY REPRESENT three generations in the theater. J.H. Crouch taught Shakespeare to J.H. Bledsoe in the '50s. Bledsoe helped introduce James Luse to the Bard in the late '70s.
Now it's the '90s and all three men are helping a fourth generation put ``Othello'' and ``A Midsummer Night's Dream'' on stage at the Virginia Shakespeare Festival. ``Othello'' opens Friday, and ``Midsummer'' begins July 15.
Crouch, who directs ``Othello,'' is in his 70s and has the sharp-eyed, silver-bearded look of a Prospero. He founded the Colorado Shakespeare Festival many years ago.
In 1978 when Bledsoe, by then a William and Mary professor, set about creating a Virginia Shakespeare Festival, he called on his old professor for advice. And this is the third time he's employed Crouch as a director.
James Luse, director of ``Midsummer,'' was Bledsoe's student. He's 40 now and affiliated with the Longwharf Theater in Connecticut. But he's returned often to direct, partly because of his regard for Bledsoe.
``He's a reincarnated Elizabethan,'' Luse says of his onetime teacher.
Luse's ``Midsummer'' emphasizes the dreamlike. Luse believes the play treats ``human beings as an experiment that is being watched by a world that lives beyond us - a world unseen.'' He regards his challenge as director ``to paint the three worlds of the drama - the mortal world of the educated protagonists, of the uneducated - like Bottom - and the spirit world that hovers behind the other two.''
Luse promises to take the audience into ``the dense, dark, seething mystery of the forest where humans can live in chaos, can make their own chaos, but when you least expect it - there's light.''
Crouch, who has directed more than 100 plays and 25 or 26 of Shakespeare's works, aims at an ``Othello'' that is ``fast, lean and severe.'' He approves one critic's conception of Othello as ``a picture of human personality being destroyed by anxiety.''
He worries little about what motivates the malignant Iago who drives Othello to kill the woman he loves. After all, ``meaningless evil exists.'' But Crouch does promise an Iago played not as an obvious villain.
``That would fool no one; this Iago is the nicest man you know.''
Bledsoe, who created the festival, still handles the administration. That means attention to scheduling, funding and promotion. He is as much arts bureaucrat as artist, but a man in his time plays many parts. After all, Shakespeare was one of the owners of the Globe - helping run the show is also in the theatrical tradition.
Bledsoe keeps his hand in artistically by teaching a Shakespeare course. William and Mary's program is a teaching theater, where presenting Shakespeare is passed down from generation to generation. The finished shows are for the entertainment of the public, but the process of preparing them provides training for the participants.
``Midsummer'' rehearses in the afternoon and ``Othello'' in the evening. And since virtually everyone has a part in both shows, it makes for a long day of total immersion in a community of the theater.
``The greatest pleasure in the theater is to work with a company on a play,'' Crouch said, adding that he enjoys ``working with young actors more than with professionals, because they have more to learn.''
To embody the title character in ``Othello,'' however, Crouch has the services of the company's one professional, Bill Grimmette, 50, a powerfully built actor who Crouch describes as ``superb.'' Grimmette has a long list of stage, film and TV credits, but cheerfully concedes that ``Othello is the best role I've ever had.'' And he believes there are two keys to the Moor's behavior.
``First, he is estranged from everything he knows - his family, culture, race and religion - so when the house of cards falls, he has nowhere to turn,'' Grimmette said. ``He is alone.''
But even when Othello murders his wife, Desdemona, ``it is out of a sense of justice for the wrongs she's committed,'' the actor said. ``When he finds he was misled, he kills himself out of the same sense of justice.''
Othello's nemesis is played by Robert A. Goddard III, a VCU graduate student in theater, back for his fourth season at the Festival. In Iago, he too feels he has gotten the best part he's ever had. And he looks the part with the sharp, dangerous face of a young Basil Rathbone.
But no matter how dangerous a relationship play onstage, the company members bond, Grimmette said.
``The kind of evil we've got to portray onstage can't exist if we aren't close offstage.'' ILLUSTRATION: Photo by ROBIE RAY
Festival staff, from left, Jerry Bledsoe, James Luse, intern Joshua
Redford and J.H. Crouch.
VIRGINIA SHAKESPEARE FESTIVAL
When: Friday through July 31. Shows are at 8 p.m. Tuesdays
through Saturdays and 2 p.m. Sundays. ``Othello'' opens Friday and
continues Saturday, Sunday, Wednesday and July 14, 19, 21, 23, 27,
29 and 31. ``A Midsummer Night's Dream'' opens July 15 and continues
on July 16, 17, 20, 22, 24, 26, 28, 30.
Where: Phi Beta Kappa Hall on the College of William and Mary
campus in Williamsburg
How much: Tickets $12 each, $20 for both plays
Tell me more: The box office is open weekdays 10 a.m. to 8 p.m.,
Sundays 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Call 1-221-2674.
by CNB