Shorter ‘Wars’ to Bow on a Smaller Stage : ‘God Say Amen,’ the last line of the English Shakespeare Company’s ‘Roses’ marathon, will be its West Coast premiere

“I Survived the Wars of the Roses.”

That slogan was seen everywhere during the late 1980s, on T-shirts and buttons and bumper stickers, in theater lobbies from Europe to Chicago to Japan.

Seen everywhere, that is, but here. Few Southern Californians can boast that they survived the English Shakespeare Company’s heralded 23-hour marathon of the Bard’s history plays.

Although Los Angeles has been host to other European theatrical epics--who can forget Ariane Mnouchkine’s Theatre du Soleil in 1984 or Peter Brook’s “Mahabharata” during the 1987 Los Angeles Festival--the English Shakespeare Company has never toured the United States west of Chicago’s International Theatre Festival. And that trek occurred back in 1988.

The New York Times was not alone in judging “The Wars of the Roses” to be “the hottest ticket in world theater,” but no local theater or producer ever risked sponsoring a company of more than 50 members.

This week, however, the educational unit of the company, under the aegis of the Santa Monica Playhouse, is conducting a series of public workshop sessions at the playhouse, Los Angeles Theatre Center and UCLA.

In addition, the English company will perform an abridged version of its War of the Roses cycle, “God Say Amen,” on Thursday, Friday and Saturday nights at UCLA’s Schoenberg Hall.

How could the relatively tiny playhouse dare to produce the West Coast premiere of the English troupe? Part of the explanation can be found in the radical reduction of the road company to seven members. In addition, local audiences won’t see all the history plays that chronicle the bloody civil wars between the houses of York and Lancaster (the red roses vs. the white). That epic took three days to perform, stretching from “Richard II” through the five “Henry” parts to “Richard III.”

“God Say Amen” is based on themes from the Wars of the Roses cycle. Appropriately, “God say amen” is the last line of the cycle’s final play, “Richard III.”

Instead, Los Angeles will be treated to a consumer-friendly, 90-minute, intermission-less version tailored to reflect today’s headlines. But this cut version isn’t cut-rate. Nor is it prompted by our notorious short attention span. After three years of grueling tours that included stops in Tokyo and Hong Kong, the company simply had had enough.

“The Wars are done, finished!” ESC co-artistic director Michael Bogdanov declared emphatically by phone from Germany, where he’s also director of the Hamburg state theater. “We televised them and put them to bed.”

However, the playhouse dared to produce Bogdanov’s company here for aesthetic as well as economic reasons. “Their mission statement is almost word-for-word ours: To make theater accessible as a meaningful tool in the community,” playhouse co-artistic director Chris DeCarlo discovered during his company’s tours of England.

Bogdanov echoed DeCarlo: “The life blood of theater is . . . to find something to say at a particular moment that relates to a particular community.”

Toward this goal, both the workshops and “God Say Amen” depend on a populist approach. It’s no accident that one workshop session is titled “Demystifying Shakespeare” or that actors refer to the Persian Gulf War during “God Say Amen.”

“It involves a lot of audience debate,” Bogdanov said of “Amen.” “Can a war ever be just? Henry V thought so. Many of our leaders do too.”

But did Shakespeare?

Such questions are integral to “Amen,” said the English company’s Education Department director, Carol Winter, from London. “People haven’t had the opportunity to discuss publicly, in a group situation, the Gulf War and war in general,” Winter said. “Discussing the war in an open, friendly environment becomes a cathartic experience.”

“Amen” intercuts Shakespeare with Saddam Hussein, Bolingbroke with President Bush. It’s political, topical, immediate, accessible. Just as Kenneth Branagh’s Renaissance Theater Company did in his film adaptation of “Henry V,” the message, once again, is that war is hell. When Henry gives thanks to God for victory, another actor exclaims: “Bollocks! It was superior technology, the longbow at Agincourt, the rifle at Rouke’s Drift, the Spitfire in 1945, the Scud missile in 1991.”

The English company’s co-founder Michael Pennington can make the nearly 400-year-old “Henry V” sound like a CNN news synopsis: “This play is about a ruler who, facing civil unrest at home, diverts attention by fighting abroad. Everyone knows that if you unite a society by fighting a war overseas, it does wonders in taking their minds off the unemployed at home.”

Henry V’s France? Margaret Thatcher’s Falklands? George Bush’s Iraq?

Director Bogdanov founded the English Shakespeare Company in 1988 with actor Pennington. Stars of Britain’s two most famous English theatrical institutions--Pennington came from the Royal Shakespeare Company and Bogdanov from the National Theater of Great Britain--both dreamed of a less elitist touring ensemble that would take the Bard’s language out of the province of academia and into working-class environments.

“The English Shakespeare Company,” Pennington announced when the troupe was formed, “is based on an utter commitment to the assumption that the plays of Shakespeare are a common coin, that they belong to everybody.”

“Our work is about getting rid of attitudes,” Bogdanov said. “We want to get rid of the in-built tradition that as long as you do the meter of the poetry then the meaning will take care of itself. But the poetry is not essential. The ideas are the essential part.”

Shakespeare wrote for the common man, according to Bogdanov. The Bard’s dynasties begat our “Dynasty,” the show biz Shakespeare distorted history just as ruthlessly as today’s Hollywood.

This radical approach to classic repertory appealed to DeCarlo. He and Evelyn Rudie had been expanding the playhouse’s community role since becoming co-artistic directors in 1973.

Its Mobile Touring Project travels to schools, offering educational theater. Workshops are conducted for internists in the Young Professionals Company and for experienced actors. Comedy writer Jerry Mayer is about to debut his third playhouse world premiere, “A Love Affair.” A new family theater musical, “Mary-Mary, Quite Contrary” opens today. And its permanent ensemble, the Actor’s Repertory Theatre, will conduct workshops in Japan later this fall.

“A turning point for us,” said DeCarlo, “was creating the play ‘Dear Gabby.’ ”

The 1988 production concerned teen-age problems in contemporary society. The playhouse enlisted adolescents to confront issues such as addiction, suicide, peer pressure, sex and rejection. The multicultural “Dear Gabby” began the playhouse’s international touring program, traveling to Montreal, Japan, New York and England.

“ ‘Dear Gabby’ meant taking on a conscience in the community, realizing the significance and power of theater as a working tool to deal with insoluble issues,” DeCarlo said. “That play was very on the nose, very direct, very upfront, very honest, and it came from the heart and soul of the performers who created it.”

This July, the English Shakespeare Company sponsored the playhouse’s workshop tour of England, as well as the playhouse’s musical on ecology, “1994--a telling of tomorrow.”

That second international tour proved invaluable to the playhouse. “We wanted to bring American actors into an environment that wasn’t elitist but was very down-to-earth and practical,” DeCarlo said. “There’s a perception among American actors that British actors are superior. It’s amazing to hear how much they look up to us.”

After exploring the English company’s workshop process, DeCarlo was determined to find a way to bring it to Southern California. “Immediately, it was, ‘Let’s get to the nuts and bolts and do the work.’ All down-to-earth and very open and very accessible. They were there working with you rather than sitting up on a pedestal pontificating.”

At that time, the Shakespeare company was scheduled to end its American educational tour in Chicago. “They weren’t planning to come to the West Coast at all,” DeCarlo said. “They didn’t know if they had the resources to manage it.”

DeCarlo proposed that Los Angeles be included in the company’s 1991 educational tour of the United States. His playhouse would take care of the scheduling, he said.

His style was DeCarlo and Rudie’s kind of theater.

Describing the English company’s workshops, DeCarlo said: “First, you play.

“All the classes seem to be structured around play. You either play with juggling balls, or bags, or names, or words, doing physical contact things. Any feelings of embarrassment or discomfort vanish quickly. You’re all in this boat, and you’re just playing.”

Will this cultural coup give the playhouse more clout and prestige in the theater community? After all, no other company has managed to lure such a celebrated institution to Los Angeles.

DeCarlo rejects any suggestion of the playhouse turning elitist.

“The public’s general perception of theater is that it’s elitist, up there with opera and ballet--not accessible, not available to everybody,” he said. But that’s not true. The public has to be educated. The biggest culprit in not solving this perceptual problem is the theater community. We aren’t taking a major role in sensitizing and nourishing an appreciation and awareness of what this process is about. It has to be infused in our education.”

That’s certainly the populist ethic being championed by the English visitors during their educational tour of the United States. Now the only question remaining is how many Southern Californians will experience their work and later boast, “I survived the Wars of the Roses.”