Bard, Where Art Thou?

“Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more.” So goes the cry with which Shakespeare’s King Henry V, the hawkish Harry, pumps up his men to charge forth into battle. And so might a similar exhortation resound through the rehearsal halls of the Music Center these days.

There too a leader has been readying his troupes. Sir Peter Hall, founder of England’s Royal Shakespeare Company, former head of its National Theatre and Shakespearean royalty if ever there was, is directing a new staging of “Romeo and Juliet.” The production opens today at the Ahmanson Theatre.

The “breach” in this case is latter-day Los Angeles, a land more widely regarded as the pinnacle of pop than the natural province of classical theater. But to many who hold the Bard near and dear, it might as well be the battlements of 15th century England and France.

Despite past efforts to make the scribe from Stratford-on-Avon a series regular in the land of the WGA, the DGA and SAG, Los Angeles largely remains unconquered territory for Shakespeare and his literary kin. It stands alone in this regard, among cities of comparable size and wealth. For while there are a number of smaller and seasonal companies that produce Shakespeare and his fellows, there is no regularly scheduled, large-scale classical repertory theater here.

What’s more, the opening of a major new production by the renowned Hall is not automatically perceived as the Big Event it would be elsewhere. “Shakespeare in Love”? Sure. Shakespeare on Stage? That’s another matter.

“Doing Shakespeare is fairly easy in most cities,” says actor-director Dakin Matthews, who plays Lord Capulet in the Hall “Romeo and Juliet” and is also managing director of the L.A. classics troupe Antaeus Company. “Most have a Shakespeare company, a Shakespeare festival. I’ve always felt, boy, you do Shakespeare and the audience shows up--in Ashland, [Ore.,] the Bay Area, San Diego. I’ve done 60 or 70 Shakespeare productions as an actor or director and only two or three of them have been in L.A. Clearly there’s something different about trying to work in this city.

“Audiences are not as receptive here,” he continues. “People outside L.A. go to Shakespeare for the Shakespeare. People come to the Ahmanson or the Taper not for the Shakespeare, but because they think it’s going to be an event. The pressure is very high in this town, and the expectations are sometimes unmeetable.”

Certainly L.A. theatergoers will come out for “Event” Shakespeare, particularly if the run is short or celebrities are involved. Witness the popularity of the Royal Shakespeare Company and Le Theatre du Soleil at the 1984 Olympic Arts Festival, Kenneth Branagh’s Renaissance Theatre Company at the Taper in 1990 or Ian McKellen’s “Richard III” at UCLA in 1992. But it’s a different matter to sell a full run, let alone repertory, at a regular theatrical venue.

The reasons for the difference are historical, cultural and practical, ranging from the relative newness of the region’s arts institutions to the overweening presence of the film and television industry and the sheer number of entertainment options the city has to offer. Some of these factors are unique to L.A. and some are not. Yet there are artists, audience members and others here who believe fervently that the Bard belongs in L.A. just as much as anywhere.

“The classics are classics because they’ve been hits for hundreds of years,” insists Frank Dwyer, an actor-director-playwright-translator who has worked extensively in Los Angeles and in New York. “You can spend two hours in [Shakespeare’s ‘Twelfth Night’] Illyria, and it can change your life. You come out more at home with the fact of your own mortality. Modern plays need to aspire to that, and modern audiences need to be lifted above the latest TV level. It helps us to be better people.”

The Ahmanson’s artistic director, Gordon Davidson, would agree. He has long championed the cause of bringing large-scale classical repertory to L.A., not only at the Ahmanson, but at his other theater, the Mark Taper Forum. In the summer of 1999, Davidson brought Hall to L.A. and the Ahmanson to stage “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” and “Measure for Measure,” in productions featuring such well-known actors as Kelly McGillis and Richard Thomas.

At the time, the project was trumpeted as the first step in forming an American Shakespeare company, a goal Hall has spoken of for years. And while the current company of actors is not the same this time around and boasts no instantly recognizable stars, “Romeo and Juliet” may certainly be seen as a follow-up to that effort.

“I firmly believe that we should be doing Shakespearean rep in the Ahmanson, that part of the profile [of that theater] must be classic plays of size and scope, and the best example is Shakespeare,” Davidson says. “One part of the Ahmanson profile is musicals and contemporary plays of scale and scope, and the other anchor should be Shakespeare--initially with one of the great interpreters of Shakespeare in the English speaking stage.

“I remain as always optimistic, until proven otherwise,” he continues. “It does take a lot of stick-to-itiveness. But there’s no question in my mind that the two areas that are the wellsprings of Western culture and are basic to our lives for nourishment, understanding and entertainment are Shakespeare and the Greeks.”

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Los Angeles’ relationship to classical theater--the Western canon generally thought to include everything from Greek tragedy to vintage Americana, with emphasis on such giants as Shakespeare, Ibsen, Shaw and Chekhov--has always been different from that of other major cities. In addition to L.A.’s populist image and its much-vaunted multiculturalism, the city’s major cultural institutions came into being much later than those of New York, Boston, Washington or a number of other places.

The European-based traditions have simply never been as rooted in Los Angeles as they have elsewhere. “Shakespeare around the country does well,” notes Davidson, who first came to Los Angeles from New York in 1964. “There’s just not enough tradition here on the large scale.”

Indeed, L.A. theater is a child of the ‘60s. That’s when the Music Center and the city’s other major institutions--places traditionally charged with propagating the canon--were built. It was also a time of counterculture, not classical repertory.

The Taper, founded in 1967, put itself on the map with political docudramas like “In the Matter of J. Robert Oppenheimer” (1968), about the physicist who helped pioneer the first atomic bomb, “The Trial of the Catonsville Nine” (1971), a courtroom docudrama about a Vietnam War protest, and “Zoot Suit” (1978), a pachuco-era drama inspired by a historical incident. And while the Taper has long presented one classical work a season in the majority of its seasons, it has also made it a priority to stay the topical, politically charged course, with an emphasis on contemporary plays.

Davidson has led the Taper from the beginning, but only took over the helm of the Ahmanson in 1989. Consequently, during the ‘80s, the Taper was the primary home of Davidson’s classics efforts.

In the early 1980s, Davidson launched his most sustained attempt to establish classical repertory. A series of works, including “Twelfth Night,” “Richard III” and “Measure for Measure,” were presented at the Taper, with many L.A.-based artists in the company. The experiment lasted for seven years before Davidson found himself losing actors to film and TV work.

“We began to have a core of a company, but then those actors went on,” he recalls. “It was too expensive. There was a lot of belt tightening then, and it was getting harder to find pairs of plays that could work with [the limited space available at the Taper] backstage. We weren’t able to build enough continuity.”

In the late 1980s, the movement known as multiculturalism came to the fore and priorities shifted. Patterns in both arts funding and programming changed to favor contemporary theater that focused on themes of ethnic, racial or cultural identity. Making the case for the canon, not surprisingly, became an even lower priority than usual.

In the mid-’90s, Taper audiences saw the theater’s main stage multiculturalism reach a peak. Backed by a $1.47-million grant from the Lila Wallace-Reader’s Digest Fund for its Latino Theatre Initiative, the theater presented such works as Luis Valdez’s “Bandido!,” a historical musical told from a Chicano perspective; “Black Elk Speaks,” a Native American drama; and Eduardo Machado’s Cuban American saga “Floating Islands.”

Critical and subscriber response was largely negative, and subsequent seasons backed off from this approach. Meanwhile, Davidson never lost his interest in making regular classical repertory a reality. The Taper’s most recent Shakespeare outing was a 1992 “Richard II,” starring Kelsey Grammer. However, since then, Davidson has focused on the Ahmanson as the more suitable venue for the Bard.

In 1998, Hall, famous also for his teaching of thespians, came to Los Angeles and held a Shakespeare workshop that was taken by many high-profile actors, including Thomas, McGillis and David Dukes. That fed the momentum for Hall to direct at the Ahmanson, as he did in June 1999, carefully selecting an ensemble of actors, in part from the pool of those who had taken his workshop.

While the critical response leaned toward the positive, public reaction to the 1999 outings was mixed. The Ahmanson’s policy is not to release ticket sales figures, but Davidson acknowledges that sales for “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” and “Measure for Measure” were not as strong as was hoped. “I was disappointed that there wasn’t an automatic attraction to the idea of Shakespeare,” admits Davidson. “I think people like it, they want some continual contact with it, but it’s not a must. We were very pleased with the response to ‘Measure,’ but we had counted on ‘Dream’ being the popular success and it wasn’t.”

What went wrong? “I think we missed something in the [‘Dream’] production that would have made it more directly connected to an audience,” offers Davidson, referring in part to the decision to stage the play in Elizabethan dress. By contrast, “ ‘Measure’ had a sense of timelessness. It also may be that people have seen enough ‘Dreams.’ ”

Or it may be that L.A. audiences prefer their Shakespeare a certain way--if at all. “L.A. audiences are really kind of fad-driven,” actor-director Matthews says. “They’ll rush to the newest fad thing. So the problem with doing Shakespeare is that you feel as though you have to do it contrary to expectation to get any heat. L.A. is obsessed with what’s hot and a lot of directors are driven to overcook their productions. But if you take a great play and fight it, you will always lose.”

The classical offerings weren’t scaled back to a single production, however, because of the 1999 repertory’s disappointing box office. “I very much want to continue the idea of repertory,” Davidson says. “We weren’t able this year, partly due to finances and partly just [for lack of] the right combination of plays. But we are planning for next year. I operate out of hope and expectation. So by the end of next year, there will have been five [productions], hopefully, and we’ll take stock.”

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When it comes to presenting the classics in Los Angeles, the distance between multicultural sensibilities and classical European-driven culture may not be the great divide. The greater gap may be the perceived distance between “high” and “low” culture, classical and pop.

Pop culture and the Hollywood machine so dominate L.A. that the industry’s preferences can’t help but affect the audience. Those who prefer the classical performing arts are often made to feel they are going against the grain in a way that wouldn’t be the case elsewhere.

“In most other major cities there’s a longer tradition and history of theatergoing that has a basis in classical work,” says Art Manke, co-founder of A Noise Within, one of L.A.’s most successful smaller classical companies, now in its 10th season. “Because Hollywood is so focused on new material, this is the frontier for new work.”

For the classics, that is an extra, if not insurmountable, hurdle. And the problem is not limited to theater. “Opera has finally established itself in L.A.,” notes Manke, who is currently choreographing South Coast Repertory’s “Much Ado About Nothing,” the first Shakespearean production at that theater in nearly five years. “But we have yet to be able to support a classical ballet company. And we have yet to be able to support a full-time [League of Resident Theatres]-scale classical company.”

Whether the audience is out there is the subject of ongoing debate. “Fortunately for us, those people who are interested in the classics have found us,” says Manke, whose troupe has been stymied in plans for expansion not by a lack of ticket buyers, but by an inability to secure a long-term lease on its Glendale facility. “But I think there are other rings of potential audience out there that have yet to be drawn in.”

The industry also creates unique problems for Will’s would-be presenters. Chief among these is that a Shakespeare play requires a large cast, and keeping a group of actors together for any length of time is tough. The siren call of more lucrative screen work inevitably intrudes.

“With our company, we have yet to do our first Shakespeare because the logistics of doing it are difficult,” explains Matthews, whose Antaeus troupe first formed in the early ‘90s. “It takes at least 16 and sometimes 24 actors, and it’s very hard to get that many who will commit to the time it takes. It’s always difficult to be a stage artist in this town and doing anything that doesn’t automatically qualify you for the next ‘ER.’ ”

The best solution, many say, would serve both aesthetic and practical considerations: the formation of an ongoing company. “I’m a believer that classical theaters must be company-based and the actors must be with it for a long time,” Matthews says. “That’s contrary to the pickup mentality and the event orientation in this town.

“Shakespeare wrote for a company, and for centuries his plays were performed by a company,” Matthews continues. “Each rehearsal becomes that much easier if you’re working with the same people again. You develop a shorthand, an easy way of communicating with each other. Without a continuity of artists, it’s very difficult.”

You can’t underestimate the value of a resident company, Manke concurs. “I don’t think you can do one Shakespeare every year or every other year and have a company that is up to speed in terms of the technical facility to do those works. It would be like someone who does musical theater deciding that they were going to do a Wagner opera. You just don’t have the chops.”

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Hall’s dream of forming an American Shakespeare company may yet come to be. While his relationship with the Ahmanson is still taking shape, there are those who remain hopeful it could--and should--happen here.

It won’t be easy, but then, it might not be easy to do it anywhere at this point. “I hate to blame L.A.,” Dwyer says. “I was part of a classical company in New York, and I don’t know that it’s easier in New York. It’s hard to do serious theater any place in the country because it’s a country in which there’s a scandalously low level of support for the arts. It may have to be subsidized, like opera.

“I think the possibility exists,” Dwyer continues. “Everybody needs to take responsibility for it. I have hope--a combination of hope and bitterness.”

For now at least, there is “Romeo and Juliet.” “Even if this doesn’t have mass appeal, it means so much to the artists in the community that it’s like an energy boost,” says Davidson. “A life absent of it is a poorer life.”

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* “Romeo and Juliet,” Ahmanson Theatre, Music Center, 135 N. Grand Ave., downtown L.A. Opens today, 4 p.m. $25-$55. Regular performances: Tuesdays-Fridays, 8 p.m.; Saturdays, 2 and 8 p.m.; Sundays, 2 p.m. Additional performances: Feb. 11, 18, 25, 7:30 p.m.; March 1, 8, 15, 2 p.m. Ends March 18. $20-$55. (213) 628-2772.