ORANGE COUNTY PERSPECTIVE : A Shakespearean Tragedy

It has been a roller-coaster ride the last couple of years for GroveShakespeare, Orange County’s second-largest professional theater company. The inescapable conclusion is that the end of the ride is here.

The unraveling of the company has been sad and painful to witness.

Last week, there were administrative staff layoffs. And on Monday, after the disbanding of the cast of “King Lear,” which was to open June 26, came the resignations of the acting artistic director and the president of the board of trustees.

In the past, the company always was saved by its ability to pull off the requisite miracle at the last minute. We have noted previously both the company’s critically acclaimed productions and its courage in pressing on in the face of what seemed to be impending disaster. But now longstanding funding problems have proved to be the group’s undoing.

Somehow, GroveShakespeare managed to survive the ouster of its founding artistic director two years ago and to hold itself together, with the recent support of the City Council.

The burden and the glory of this fixture in the community was never more evident than in 1990, when it rode out a threatening deficit and outlasted the tenure of a hostile city councilman who had dismissed Shakespeare as “not American.”

The company prevailed, demonstrating its ability to overcome both financial problems and antagonistic statements. Then there was a wonderful high note, an anonymous contribution from a woman who, although not wealthy, gave $10,000 in expressing the joy she found in live Shakespeare.

Finally, the company’s $200,000 deficit, the early expiration of its revenues from season tickets and troubles in the board of trustees proved insurmountable.

Grove officials have been reluctant to say flatly that the end has come. But that conclusion is unavoidable.

The cancellation of the 1993 season would leave Garden Grove without its customary outdoor Shakespeare, and it would leave all of us a little poorer.