THEATER : ‘I Say Throw Those Grove Bums Out’

Dear Mr. Herman:

I’ve been reading about the financial troubles of the Grove Shakespeare Festival in your newspaper. There have been stories in the Orange County news section, in the Calendar section, in the View section.

Don’t reporters for The Times have anything better to write about?

I say throw those Grove bums out. Get rid of them. Wash them out the door with a hose. I’d even say nuke ‘em, if I were sure we wouldn’t have to bury the waste products in our own back yard.

My name is C.M. Jerks, and the reason I don’t enjoy all this brouhaha is pretty simple. Those theater bums are out of step with the times, with the people and with the moral climate of Orange County.

I fully support the City Council majority in its refusal to help the Grove out of its cash shortage.

What was the first play they put on this season at the Grove? A 322-year-old Frenchified comedy called “The Miser” about a crotchety bachelor who loves money more than anything else and buries a pot of gold in his back yard. What has that got to do with us?

I know there’s a lot of material wealth around here. I’m not stupid. But I don’t remember hearing about anybody burying a pot of gold in his back yard. Do you?

And just who is this Moliere character who wrote the play? Some bankrupt libertine who didn’t even go by his own name, that’s who. He attacked organized religion. He made fun of the middle class. He satirized doctors and lawyers. Is that the kind of drivel we should be subjected to? I think not.

Next, those theater bums put on not one but three plays by an Englishman named Shakespeare. Count them: “Much Ado About Nothing,” “As You Like It” and “Othello.” Come on. Three plays by the same guy? Doesn’t anybody at the Grove realize there are plenty of other writers around? And I’m not just talking about American writers. I’m not that provincial.

The first play took place in Italy. Who is Shakespeare trying to kid? Is this guy Italian or English or what? He sounds bogus to me. On top of that, he’s even older than Moliere. The second play had a woman running around trying to pass herself off as a man. That should have gotten an X rating right there.

The third play, though, really went beyond the pale. In it, a black man marries a white woman and loves her so much he kills her out of jealousy. I am no racist, but I found the interracial sex exceedingly offensive. And I would think that black people would be offended, too.

It doesn’t surprise me that Shakespeare would trample on a sensitive issue like that, and with such relish. I have heard rumors that he had illegitimate children. Also, correct me if I’m wrong, wasn’t he a monumental plagiarist? Didn’t he steal his plots from other writers? Isn’t there a question about whether he wrote his own plays at all?

For a theater troupe to give voice to a writer of questionable character seems to me inexcusable. And to do so by devoting almost its entire schedule to him seems totally unreasonable. Such a writer does not deserve a platform in Garden Grove or anywhere else.

In the meantime--to add insult to injury--those theater bums are about to mount a play by someone even less reputable than Shakespeare. The play is called “The Importance of Being Earnest,” and its author is Oscar Wilde.

In case you didn’t know it, Wilde was a notorious homosexual. Personally, I have nothing against homosexuals. I’m much more tolerant than that. They have their place, just like Catholics and Jews, blacks and yellows, the physically challenged, the lesbians, all the minority groups that compose our multiracial, multiethnic, equal-opportunity society.

But you have to draw the line somewhere. Frankly, I wish the Grove’s cash crisis had forced those theater bums to cancel “The Importance of Being Earnest” instead of Dylan Thomas’ “A Child’s Christmas in Wales.”

The poetic blatherings of a Welsh drunk like Thomas, deplorable though they may be, would constitute a less dangerous threat to community standards of decency than a facile comedy by a homosexual Irish dandy whose wit is liable to find favor with high-minded reviewers such as yourself.

I would appreciate it if you would run this letter without any cuts. A friend of mine doubts that you will. She says all you media folks love to slant the news, and that any point of view opposing yours is not likely to get much of a hearing. Please prove her wrong.

Yours sincerely,

C.M. Jerks

P.S: My friend also warned me not to tell that my initials stand for Council Majority. It’s an unusual name, which is why I never use it. I just go by my initials.