O.C. STAGE REVIEW : Bard Barrage Proves Fun--and Lucrative : The Grove Shakespeare Festival’s benefit show of Shakespeare’s greatest hits delighted a welcoming crowd. It also netted $20,000 toward matching a $50,000 challenge grant.

As Thomas F. Bradac put it from the stage of the Festival Amphitheatre on Monday, the evening was “an opportunity to hear some very fine actors say some very fine words.”

With that characteristic understatement, Bradac, artistic director of the Grove Shakespeare Festival, launched a benefit performance of Shakespeare’s greatest hits for a huge, welcoming crowd that drank in every quip and gesture.

“A Midsummer Night’s Eve at the Grove” not only offered an entertaining bill of two dozen scenes and monologues selected from 17 of the Bard’s 37 plays, but wonderful proof that the passage of four centuries since they were written is the equivalent of an eye blink. That is how resonantly modern his words seemed.

Moreover, one of the chief pleasures of the evening was the chance to watch actors change roles and exhibit both their range and the playwright’s range. And the cast of six--Kelly McGillis, Daniel Bryan Cartmell, John Frederick Jones, Gregory Itzin, Carl Reggiardo and, last though hardly least, Kamella Tate--did not disappoint.

They gave all sorts of readings--funny, bravura, quirky, casual, stentorian, dark--but they almost always engaged us with the sheer conviction of their work. To put it plainly, they looked as if they were having fun. Nothing communicates better with an audience than that.

Among the many highlights of the evening’s anthology, my three favorites were Jones as Malvolio in a monologue from “Twelfth Night,” Cartmell and Itzin as Lear and the Fool in a scene from “King Lear,” and Tate and Reggiardo as Kate and Petruchio in a scene from “The Taming of the Shrew.”

Not far behind were Itzin’s quietly impassioned Richard from “Richard II”; Reggiardo’s authoritative Hotspur from “Henry IV, Part I,” as well as his vengeful Edmund from “King Lear,” and Cartmell’s ringing John of Gaunt from “Richard II.”

Tate, meanwhile, turned in a brilliant sequence of role changes, going consecutively from Olivia in “Twelfth Night” to Juliet in “Romeo and Juliet” and finally to Kate. Her animation and depth of feeling had an electric charge each time, and each time the jolt was different.

For dry humor, nothing equaled the ruminative wit of Jones’ performance at the moment in “Twelfth Night” when Malvolio--a manipulative, social-climbing house steward--is duped by a forged letter into believing that the mistress of the house is in love with him.

In a brooding vein, the blunt yet compassionate wisdom of Itzin’s purposely underplayed Fool drew an affecting contrast with the anguish of Cartmell’s self-lacerating Lear in a climactic scene from “King Lear.” From the warmth of Itzin’s low-key portrayal, you thought that the Fool truly cared for Lear. And you believed too in Lear’s torment from the look in Cartmell’s eyes of guilt, resentment and confusion.

On a lighter note, Tate and Reggiardo gave a thrilling account of the contest of wills between Kate and Petruchio. Depicting their first meeting in “The Taming of the Shrew,” both players burst with a rare, comic energy. The flavor and badinage of the scene were marvels of timing, all the more so for kick-starting the characters from a standstill.

There were quieter moments with a certain potency--such as a scene from “Julius Caesar” with Jones as Cassius and Reggiardo as Brutus awaiting the outcome of the fateful plot against Caesar--but others that lacked any force, such as Itzin’s deliberately casual Hamlet and Jones’ off-kilter Iago.

As for McGillis, who got star billing for the evening, she gave a bright reading of the Prologue from “Henry V” to set the stage for the rest of the selections and a pleasant but not distinctive rendering of Viola from “Twelfth Night.” Unfortunately, her Lady Macbeth lacked credibility--though no more so than Jones’ Macbeth--and her Portia from “The Merchant of Venice” didn’t rise to the occasion except to sound pretty.

A narrative text written by Itzin to weave the scenes into a coherent pattern sometimes skirted preachiness but on the whole achieved its aim.

Barbara Hammerman, the Grove managing director, announced that the theater had netted $20,000 toward matching a $50,000 challenge grant from the San Francisco-based James S. Irvine Foundation, which is to establish a $100,000 reserve fund. A Grove spokeswoman said the turnout was better than anticipated. About 480 people attended the performance, priced at $50 a ticket. The audience included 185 people who had paid $125 each for the show and a dinner before it.

‘A MIDSUMMER NIGHT’S EVE AT THE GROVE’

A Grove Shakespeare Festival production at the Festival Amphitheatre, July 30. Directed by Thomas F. Bradac. With Kelly McGillis, Daniel Bryan Cartmell, John Frederick Jones, Gregory Itzin, Carl Reggiardo and Kamella Tate.

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