STAGE REVIEW : ‘RIVALS’ AT GARDEN GROVE FESTIVAL

“The Rivals” burst into song last weekend at the Gem Theatre in Garden Grove and rolled downhill from there. Let’s hope the rest of this seventh annual Grove Shakespeare Festival won’t all be like that.

Rarely has Sheridan’s comedy of gilded wit and elaborate 18th-Century manners been so deprived of either by actors without a clue as to how you create style. They either breeze through the social satire, as though speaking the lines without thought (much less bite) were enough to carry the play--or indulge in such emphatic mugging (Kay Berlet’s Mrs. Malaprop is the monumental offender) that we wonder if we’re watching the Three Stooges at a costume ball.

Not only is the rest of this company of 15 out of its depth, but it seems further misled by director Richard Rossi, whose staging is as lacking in imagination as he is unwilling to control the excesses of the unschooled cast. Of the two lone Equity actors in the production (Herman O. Arbeit and Gregory Itzin), only one--Itzin, a good actor seriously miscast as Jack Absolute--tries in earnest to overcome the odds. He doesn’t make it.

The evening’s redeeming features are the rococo painted-on sets by Cliff Faulkner and Shigeru Yaji’s elegant costumes. Symptomatically, the interpolated singing (with original music by Chuck Estes), all wrong for this play, is what the group executes best.

The Grove Shakespeare Festival has run through some excellent directors over its seven years of existence, among them John Allison, Lee Shallat and Christopher Tabori. All came--and, for whatever unfortunate reasons, went.

To quote Mrs. Malaprop, “We shall not anticipate the past,” nor (to quote Shakespeare) the future, neither. One must assume instead that the new low achieved by the festival’s “Rivals” is a momentary misstep and that it is not speaking to more fundamental problems, such as the insufficiency of professional talent. Nothing will discourage a good director faster than bad actors, unless it’s worse wages.

Speculations notwithstanding, performances of “The Rivals” continue at 12852 Main St. in Garden Grove, Wednesdays through Saturdays at 8 p.m., Sundays at 3 p.m. until Aug. 3; (714) 636-7213. “The Tempest” follows Friday in the Festival Amphitheater.