New Donations to Resuscitate Grove Season : Theater: Gifts, including an anonymous one for $10,000, save the season from an early death and put holiday production plans back on track.

The death warrant for the Grove Shakespeare Festival’s current season has been repealed as a result of new donations, including an anonymous gift of $10,000, jubilant theater officials said Tuesday.

The Grove, which because of a lack of funds had canceled the last production of its season--Dylan Thomas’ “A Child’s Christmas in Wales”--will stage the annual yuletide production at the Gem Theatre after all, from Nov. 30 to Dec. 30.

“We got an anonymous gift from a woman who is a lover of Shakespeare,” said Dede Ginter, a spokeswoman for the Grove, Orange County’s second-largest professional troupe. “She doesn’t want her name out, and she doesn’t live in Garden Grove. She just thinks it was terrible that we would have to cancel. So she sent us a check for $10,000.”

Ginter said the woman described herself as “not a wealthy woman.”

That gift, combined with $3,500 given by the Garden Grove Firefighters on Sunday and a corporate donation of $6,000, to be made official today, by the Hyatt Regency Alicante hotel in Garden Grove, helped provide the funds that theater officials had said were needed to put on the Christmas show.

“We got a call from the Alicante the other day asking, ‘How much do you need?’ ” Ginter said. “We said we had been able to raise a total of $15,200 with other smaller donations and that we needed $6,000 to make $21,200. They said, ‘You’ve got it.’ ”

Ginter said the other donations included $1,000 from the city’s Chamber of Commerce, $500 from the Kiwanis Club and $200 from the Emblem Club.

The gifts follow a series of rebuffs--the latest on Sept. 24--by City Council members who denied several requests by theater officials for an infusion of emergency funds to close out the season as scheduled.

The council did provide $7,248 on Sept. 11 to pay immediate bills, in response to the Grove’s first request for $32,500. But that cash reprieve was given grudgingly and only after an acrimonious debate that cast serious doubt on the theater’s future in Garden Grove.

“We’re thrilled that we’re going to be able to mount the (Christmas) show,” Grove artistic director Thomas F. Bradac said Tuesday. “Nobody ever wants to shut down a season. It’s the last thing in the world we ever wanted to do.”

Bradac said that once news of its “last ditch” request of the council had been publicized, “other avenues (of contributed income) opened up.”

The 12-year-old, nonprofit theater company operates the 550-seat, outdoor Festival Amphitheatre and the 178-seat, indoor Gem Theatre under a municipal contract. Both venues are owned by the city.

The Grove produces a six-play season running from May to December. The total operating budget for the 1990 season comes to $626,739, according to the Grove’s latest projection.

Theater officials have attributed its cash crisis to two things: a $42,000 deficit held over from last season and a shortfall in anticipated subscriptions this season.

The current production, Oscar Wilde’s “The Importance of Being Earnest,” opened at the Gem on Oct. 5 and is to run through Nov. 3. That show, which received positive reviews, is doing well at the box office.

“We’ve reached 84% of projected sales on it, which is really good,” Ginter said.

“Earnest” is the fifth subscription show of the Grove season. The others were Moliere’s “The Miser” (also at the Gem) and Shakespeare’s “Much Ado About Nothing,” “As You Like It” and “Othello” (all at the amphitheater).

“A Child’s Christmas in Wales” is the only Grove production not sold by subscription. A popular show since its inception in 1986, it is an adaptation of the classic Dylan Thomas story and has been a consistent moneymaker for the Grove.

Bradac, who directed the show last year, will direct it again.