‘Stratford’: Brushing Up on the Bard’s Boyhood

“William Shakespeare has become such an icon, we sometimes forget he was a human being. There had to be something before the plays were written . . . What was this man like as a teen-ager and a young man?”

Playwright Greg Atkins is speaking about what inspired his new family play, “William of Stratford,” a fully mounted professional work commissioned by Grove Shakespeare through a grant from the Leo Freedman Foundation. It opens Thursday at the Gem Theatre in Garden Grove.

“It’s for ages 8 and up, but it’s not a children’s show” as such, Atkins said. “The youngest will get it on their level--there’s a lot of excitement, fights and adventure. Adults will get some of the parodies of Shakespearean language and events and will recognize characters--an innkeeper who’s very Falstaffian, for example.”

Shakespeare aficionados, Atkins said, will spot verbal exchanges from “Twelfth Night,” “Romeo and Juliet,” “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” and other works.

In Atkins’ play, the Bard is 17, in love with Anne Hathaway, eight years his senior, and coping with an alcoholic father. “He and his friends are dealing with dreams, with girls, what they want to be when they grow up. There’s a lot of humor and some darkness--it was a time of plagues and people trying to get by. It’s not sanitized.

“I wanted to draw the audience into that time, give them a feel for what it must have been like in 1580,” he said. “I tried to stay as true to the time as possible--it pulls you out of the show to hear an anachronism or see one.” At the same time, “I’ve tried to make it very understandable. I know so many adults who don’t understand Shakespeare; I want the audience to be totally involved.”

Barbara Hammerman, the Grove’s managing director, said that the company has “dedicated our entire 1992 season to celebrating Shakespeare coming into his own as a playwright in London.”

By kicking off the Grove season with a piece about Shakespeare as a boy in Stratford, the intent is to give audiences “a first or fresh brush with Shakespeare,” Hammerman said. “What the country was like, what the people were like, what some of the issues of the day were, will be brought to light through the telling of the story.

“We want people to realize this is not a foreign language . . . it is English, it is very accessible and it mirrors issues that we face today, which is why Shakespeare is so timeless.”

Atkins hopes that “both parents and kids” will “talk about the ideas and concepts in the play: What it must have been like, what the difference is between now and then. I hope kids have lots of questions about the work.

“After all,” he added, “William must have had one hell of a life to write those plays.”

“William of Stratford,” Gem Theatre, 12852 Main St., Garden Grove, Thursdays-Saturdays, 7 p.m.; Saturdays-Sundays, 3 p.m. through April 25. $9-$18; (714) 636-7213.

‘Coyote’ Revisited: Technical excellence and beauty of design were not in question when director Peter Brosius and the Mark Taper Forum’s Improvisational Theatre Project brought its youth production “According to Coyote” to Barnsdall Art Park in March.

Rather, the performance of John Kauffman’s North American Indian-themed play, offered by the professional cast to a mostly adult audience, seemed forced. During a subsequent performance for Arcadia schoolchildren, however, ensemble members Wolfe Bowart, Katrina Alexy, Peter Kors and Michele Mais soared.

Electricity sparked between the inspired ensemble, led by Bowart as trickster Coyote, and responsive gradeschoolers. Hoots of laughter greeted the play’s earthy humor; haunting mysticism was met with enthralled silence.

The result was theater magic.

“According to Coyote,” Ivar Theatre, 1605 N. Ivar, Hollywood, today, 11 a.m., free, (213) 387-1161; Cal State Los Angeles, Tuesday-Thursday, 11 a.m.; Saturday, 2 and 7 p.m. ; Taper Too, John Anson Ford Theatre, 2580 Cahuenga Blvd. East, April 15-16, 11 a.m. and 3:30 p.m. , April 17, 8 p.m. , April 18, 2 and 7 p.m., $5 (213) 972-7392.