ORANGE COUNTY PERSPECTIVE : All’s Well That Ends Well

What a difference a year makes. Last year at this time, the respected Grove Shakespeare Festival in Garden Grove was about to begin the new year with a $41,000 deficit. By September, things had grown so bad that Orange County’s second-largest professional troupe--which was begun as a civic operation to help change the city’s image for the better--faced the possibility of abandoning its season for lack of money.

When Grove administrators went to the City Council requesting $32,500 to tide them over, they got less than a fourth of that, along with a chilly, even derisive, reception from some members of the City Council. But since then the Grove’s financial problems have taken a turn for the better. For one thing, there was a successful run of “The Importance of Being Earnest.” For another, donors responded to the call for help. That included the much-publicized and generous gift of a woman who shamed the City Council by giving an anonymous $10,000 grant to the Grove to help keep its work alive.

But the other good news for the Grove was the departure from the City Council of Raymond T. Littrell. Littrell, amid debate last fall on whether the council should help the Grove continue its season, dismissed Shakespeare as “not American” and suggested that the troupe concentrate on American writers. The remark was an embarrassment for Garden Grove and for Orange County. Littrell chose not to run again in November and was replaced by Frank Kessler.

That shifted the council to a 3-2 majority more kindly disposed to the arts, including the Garden Grove Symphony. As a sign of that, an accommodating council voted Dec. 17 to extend the Grove’s contract for the indoor Gem and the outdoor Festival Amphitheater, both city-owned facilities, for six months beyond its expiration date of June 30.

It also agreed to a change in a clause of the contract that enables the city to order the troupe out of the facilities by giving 90 days’ written notice, thus giving assurances that the next play season will not be arbitrarily interrupted.

Implicit in the contractual changes is a more supportive posture for the city toward the arts. That’s a welcome sign and an indication of the silliness of the previous council debate. After all, the amount of money being discussed was small, especially in view of the prestige that the Grove Shakespeare Festival brings to the city. That was the original intent of the troupe, which has more than fulfilled its purpose.