ON THE ROAD : AN ACTOR’S PURSUIT OF THEATER

“I suppose I can flash--and I do at times,” acknowledged actor Benjamin Stewart, currently appearing in “The Merry Wives of Windsor” (at the Grove Shakespeare Festival). “But I consider myself an ensemble actor. I believe in the mesh of people working together.

“That’s why I keep doing that awful drive (from Laurel Canyon) to Garden Grove (and earlier this year to Costa Mesa for South Coast Repertory’s ‘Jitters’).”

The perils of an itinerant actor are nothing new to the portly, Texas-born Stewart, 44, who’s spent the last 17 years--since he was rescued from a local furniture-delivery job--pursuing theater near and far (“I can’t count the number of plays I’ve done”), in roles both large and small.

“Actually, I like smaller roles because there’s less to chew on,” he pointed out. “Often I’m cast in bombastic roles--Toby Belch in ‘Twelfth Night,’ Mr. Peachum in ‘Threepenny Opera’--and I don’t identify with these people.”

Also, after four seasons of playing leads at the Arizona Repertory Company (his last year numbered back-to-back performances in “What the Butler Saw,” “A Christmas Carol,” “Journey’s End,” “A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum” and “Uncle Vanya”), “I was just exhausted.

“Working that fast you don’t have time to do anything but resort to a bag of tricks. I’d been there four seasons; they’d seen everything I could do. I had a great following, but I thought, ‘If these people aren’t tired of me, I’m sure tired of being here and not offering them anything new.’ So I walked.”

Stewart returned to Los Angeles in 1983 and promptly began understudying Peter Ustinov in “Beethoven’s Tenth” at the Ahmanson, an enjoyable experience--although he never performed.

“Nobody would’ve wanted to see anybody else (play the role),” he reasoned. “ I wouldn’t have. . . . But it was great working on that show. My aim was to match Ustinov blow for blow. He’d written the script literarily, but spoke it very colloquially--so it took me two weeks to transcribe what he was really saying on stage. Our voices are not the same, but I came as close as I could, matching his gestures. Then after a point, I couldn’t be any more like him, so I’d do my own thing.”

Since then, Stewart has developed a show that’s all his: a one-man staging of Shakespeare’s poem “Venus and Adonis,” which was presented by the Taper at the Itchey Foot Ristorante in 1984 (receiving a Drama-Logue Award). With plans currently circulating to send the piece to the Edinburgh Festival, will he repeat his duties? “I’d like to see anyone else try it: 1,194 lines--and I didn’t cut a thing.”

The willingness to stretch for a role--both psychically and physically--has long been an element of Stewart’s career. Playing Malvolio at the Hartford Stage last fall, an angry speech was followed by the actor’s stomping off with his rear end exposed--via an unbuttoned hospital-style gown. And now, essaying the wealthy merchant Ford in “Wives,” he’s proud of a comedy bit that has him diving headlong into a laundry basket.

“It’s so light and frothy,” he stressed of the material. “It’s not (in a deep voice) Shakespeare , but it is Shakespeare: a man who could have a lot of fun. He didn’t want to write this play, you know; he was ordered to by Queen Elizabeth. So he probably dashed it off in a week.

“I think every actor should pursue Shakespeare--and Ben Jonson, John Webster, all sorts of classical theater,” he argued. “But the fact is, these were English writers. And it’s important to do works in your own language. Critics hold up the Royal Shakespeare Company (for their production of Dickens’ “Nicholas Nickleby”). Well, we’re a 200-year-old nation; what (comparable literary sources) do we have? So it’s very hard for those of us pursuing theater.”

Occasionally, the prospect of television and film work beckons.

“One of my heart’s desires is to play the villain in a James Bond movie--I think that’d be neat. But I also want to work more in town: the Pasadena Playhouse, the Taper. I haven’t been at the Ahmanson in a long time. (His credits there also include “St. Joan,” “Macbeth” and “Night of the Iguana.”) And, for a change, I would like not to have to drive so far to work.”