CALL ON SHAKESPEARE

You might say that director Edward Payson Call is familiar with his Shakespeare. Over the past 30 years, he’s mounted “Henry IV Part 1,” “Much Ado About Nothing,” “The Tempest” (twice), “King Lear,” “Twelfth Night” (three times), “Richard II,” “Troilus and Cressida,” “Julius Caesar,” “As You Like It” . . . but never “Romeo and Juliet.”

That omission will be rectified Tuesday, as Call’s staging of the work opens on the South Coast Repertory Mainstage.

“When you’ve been away from it, you do forget what a consuming labor a major Shakespeare tragedy is,” Call said. “I’m always saying, ‘I need another day, I need another week, I need another hour.’ It’s working with white heat and white knuckles. I direct a lot of contemporary plays and a lot of Shakespeare, and the fees tend to be the same if you’re doing ‘King Lear’ or ‘Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?’ It feels like you should be paid thrice for the Shakespeare.”

What exactly makes it so hard?

“It’s the difference between doing ‘A Delicate Balance’ (which he recently staged in Tucson), which is like a wonderful quartet, a small chamber piece--and Shakespeare, which is like a 120-piece symphony orchestra. It’s more demanding for the director and--vocally--for the actor. Of course, ‘Romeo and Juliet’ is also a familiar play, so you’re always fighting ghosts in the audience: ‘Remember when we saw Claire Bloom do it? . . . ‘ “

Added Call (whose posts have included production manager for Circle-in-the-Square, producing director at the Guthrie Theatre, instructor at Juilliard--and founding artistic director of the Denver Center Theatre Company), “Another challenge is balancing the lyrical excesses of the play with the human qualities. This is the only great tragedy (counting “Hamlet,” “Macbeth,” “Othello” and “King Lear”) which isn’t about royalty, but about two young people. It’s tragedy on a more domestic level.”

“You don’t hear much about this particular Holocaust,” announced local playwright Laura Crockett-Gordon, whose “Andalucia,” based on the Spanish Inquisition, opens under her direction Friday at the Hollywood-Argyle Theatre (in the former home of the disbanded American Theatre Arts).

“The play takes place in 1480 Spain (and moves thematically to 1900 Russia and 1936 Germany) and functions on two levels: as a love story, and as a study of the persecution of the Jews, which began there,” she said.

“When Ferdinand and Isabella were married, they wanted a united, Catholic Spain, wanted to get rid of the ‘infidels.’ Now Jews had been in Spain for a long time--2,000 years--and the Arabs had also been there quite a while.

“But suddenly, with this marriage, there was a concerted effort to get everyone out. Jews, Arabs and Spaniards had been intermarrying for years--to do that they had to convert to Catholicism--but they were still practicing the Jewish or Muslim religion. The Inquisition tried to flush them out. It was also a big land grab, because if you were convicted of heresy, the state got your property. As early as 1390, they were putting Jews in ghettos, passing laws (limiting their rights). Some saw the handwriting on the wall and got out, but most didn’t.”

For Crockett-Gordon (whose earlier works include “Camping in the City” and “American/Revolution”), the initial impetus to explore this story came from an interest “in my own history, my husband’s and my family. My family is Spanish, and in my circle of friends, Hispanics, a lot of us are married to Jews. There seems to be a strong attraction to each other.”

LATE CUES: The Dell’Arte Players bring their distinctive comic style to El Camino College this week with Scar Tissue in “The Road Not Taken” (Friday) and in “Malpractice” (Saturday), a foot-loose adaptation of Moliere.

“PAVLOVSKYfest,” a celebration of theater (in Spanish) by Argentine actor/playwright Eduardo Pavlovsky, opens Thursday at Stages with alternating performances of “Pablo” at 7:30 p.m. and “Potestad” at 10 p.m. The author appears in both.

Combining comedy, original music and folklore, “Huitzika: An Epic Tale of Guatemala” (a touring production of Philadelphia’s Big Small Theatre) has a single local performance this afternoon at Lincoln Junior High School in Santa Monica. Actress Fionnula Flanagan will moderate a discussion with the actors following the show.

WHAT PEOPLE ARE SAYING ABOUT . . . “The Film Society”: Jon Robin Baitz’s play on an Afrikaner schoolteacher’s rise to power in 1970 South Africa (final performances today at 2 and 8 p.m. at the Los Angeles Theatre Center), hit a welcoming chord with local critics. In this paper, Dan Sullivan found it an “articulate drama that deals directly with issues that sentimental American playwrights don’t want to get into” and praised the acting--especially that by Daniel Davis: “a major performance from a major (from now on) actor.”

In Drama-Logue, Steven Zeller also commended Baitz on a “literate, intellectual, thought-provoking, overtly dry play. . . . What makes ‘The Film Society’ engaging on another level are the outstanding acting and production values. It’s a first-class piece all the way.”

And in the Hollywood Reporter, Ed Kaufman said that “director Robert Egan has created some memorable on-stage moments that are vintage Chekhov: a blend of comedy and personal loss . . . (Also) like Chekhov, Baitz doesn’t condemn; he merely asks us to observe and understand.”