Bard Tenders Make It a Double

Dueling farcical romps--no holds Bard!

Shakespeare Orange County’s “A Comedy of Errors” opens tonight in Orange, while the Grove Theater Center airs a spoof called “Spamlet” in neighboring Garden Grove. (Can you guess which classic tragedy it’s based on?)

Both shows play weekend evenings on outdoor stages; both are intended to woo audiences otherwise intimidated by Shakespeare, and both are influenced by commedia dell’arte, a style of Italian comedy, improvised from stock situations, popular in the 16th to 18th centuries.

Still, the productions couldn’t be more different.

“ ‘A Comedy of Errors” is as close as you can get to Shakespeare sitcom,” said Tom Bradac, SOC’s producing artistic director. “It’s the shortest of the plays, the show for people who think they’re afraid of Shakespeare or who got frightened away in high school.

“It’s also his one certifiable farce. Other Shakespeare plays have elements of farce . . . . but here the physical humor, the knockabout, is written into the piece itself. The characters are constantly getting hit, beaten upon.”

So slapstick predates Larry, Moe and Curly?

“Commedia dell’arte used a great deal of slapstick, and this is certainly in that genre,” Bradac said. “In fact, physical comedy dates back to ancient Greece--Jim Carrey comes from a long line.”

“A Comedy of Errors” runs through June 29 on the Schweitzer Mall Stage at Chapman University. The cast is drawn entirely from SOC’s Youth Conservatory and from students in Chapman’s theater department.

While the Bard wrote “A Comedy of Errors,” the freewheeling “Spamlet” was collectively penned (and is being performed) by the Hollywood-based Troubadour Theater Company “with additional material by Wm. Shakespeare.” The show continues through Sunday at the Grove Festival Amphitheater.

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“It’s not ‘Hamlet,’ but the story’s there,” said Charles Johanson, producer of “Spamlet” and executive director at Grove Theater Center (GTC). “If someone had to take an exam on ‘Hamlet’ and had seen this, they’d probably pass the exam but answer the questions kind of oddly.

“It’s hysterical, stylistically unlike any theater you will have seen recently,” Johanson said by phone from his offices at the center, talking over one or more dogs barking in the background. “I don’t know a lot about commedia dell’arte, but if commedia dell’arte existed today, as we go into the new millennium, this would be it.”

“Spamlet” follows last year’s “Shrew!” based on “The Taming of the Shrew.” (Before it evolved--devolved?--into “Shrew!” Johanson recalled, he told the Troubadour troupe’s Matthew Walker, “I really like it, but cut all that Shakespeare stuff!”)

Earlier inspiration might have come from Monty Python; the show’s even closer in spirit to the touring Reduced Shakespeare Company productions, yet--surprisingly--no Troubadour member has seen one.

How freewheeling is “Spamlet”?

Imagine Ophelia in drag jumping off a 60-foot tower; an impression of tenor Jose Carreras doing a cover of the Beatles’ “I Saw Her Standing There”; a game show called “The Bard’s Barbs,” in which contestants verbally abuse opponents using Shakespearean epithets; Hormel-inspired lyrics (“Spamlet, you’re some kinda meat”), and the THX sound test--live! The set includes mini-trampolines and a jazz combo.

“At every turn you don’t know what you’re going to see,” Johanson said. “But there’s this safety net; you’re seeing this classic.” Well, sort of.

Would Bradac ever play that fast and loose with Shakespeare?

“No,” Bradac said. “For a [company] dedicated to Shakespeare, artistic investigation of the plays is the most important element . . . and the responsibility to present the language of the original as intact as you can. Otherwise, why dedicate yourself to doing the plays of Shakespeare? It wouldn’t be suitable for our audiences.”

Although the “Shakespeare stuff is there” and “you hear the most beautiful language ever written,” Johanson contended, those elements are minimal at best in “Spamlet.”

Though it has presented Shakespeare each summer, GTC does so as part of a year-round mix. Running concurrently (in the adjacent Gem theater) with “Spamlet” are James McClure’s newly revised “Max and Maxie,” opening tonight; GTC Kids’ “Camp Friendship,” and open-mike comedy nights Saturdays after 10 p.m. GTC will stick closer to the original for its production of Shakespeare’s “Henry IV,” an adaptation combining Parts I and II, July 11-27.

“We’re not at all a Shakespeare company,” Johanson agreed, noting that the venue has changed a great deal since Bradac in 1991 was forced out, apparently because of financial disagreements with the board, as artistic director of the Grove Shakespeare Festival, which he’d founded there more than a decade earlier. The current management team took over the Grove complex almost three years ago.

“A half-million-dollar renovation has given the complex a totally different look and feel; we even have a coffee shop upstairs,” Johanson continued. “It’s as far from doing a Shakespeare festival as I can imagine.” In the case of “Spamlet,” only enough Shakespeare survives to hold the lunatic Troubadour treatment together.

Bradac, meanwhile, respects most every jot and tittle at SOC. (That season continues with Shakespeare’s “The Merchant of Venice” July 17-Aug. 9 and George Bernard Shaw’s “Don Juan in Hell” Aug. 14-Sept. 6.)

“There was a big movement [deconstructivism] in the ‘80s to break the language down, to slash it, to get back to basic elements,” Bradac said. “While that artistic exploration certainly has merit, a [Shakespeare troupe] is not going to deconstruct the plays--it’s the language that makes them special.

“Shakespeare would be the first to tell you that he stole all the plots but one. . . . His main intent was not to art, but to commerce. The only thing that makes [his body of work] really different is the language. So you don’t go in and treat it with concepts that overwhelm it. The language has to come first.”

Bradac’s concept for “A Comedy of Errors,” which he’s produced four times and directed three, includes a set he described as “Venice Beach meets the Renaissance Faire.” If that recalls the “Verona Beach” setting of “William Shakespeare’s Romeo & Juliet,” that film’s recent success can hardly have been lost on either company.

According to Bradac, subscriptions for Shakespeare O.C. have been “holding” at between 700 and 800 for six years. Johanson wouldn’t divulge figures--in any case, “Spamlet” is not a subscription event. At a performance on Sunday, two-thirds of the 550-seat amphitheater appeared empty.

Johanson nevertheless believes the Grove is attracting a new audience: “We’re a younger company, all in our 30s,” Johanson said. “Our artistic aesthetic background is different. The Troubadour [players] are real young, in their 20s. Their energy and style is the perfect complement.”

Bradac, who turns 50 in July, is marking his 19th consecutive summer of producing Shakespeare in Orange County. Although there will be SOC season next year, he won’t mark his 20th in ‘98: “I’m taking a sabbatical, taking time off from my responsibilities to get re-energized,” he said. “I’m going to England to study so I can become a better teacher of Shakespeare.” He said he’ll check in on Royal Shakespeare Company workshops.

So which will it be, the pure silliness of “Spamlet” or the silliness and purity of “A Comedy of Errors”? That is the question.

* “Spamlet,” Grove Theater Center’s Festival Amphitheater, 12852 Main St., Garden Grove. Today through Sunday, 8:30 p.m.; ends Sunday. $20. (714) 741-9550.

* “A Comedy of Errors,” Chapman University’s Schweitzer Mall Stage, 301 E. Palm St., Orange. Thursdays through Saturdays, 8 p.m., Sundays 6 p.m.; ends June 29. $21. (714) 744-7016.