(Actor with CMT) Villain takes the crown (Shakespeare at Play founding member ta

[Guest guest]

Villain takes the crown

Shakespeare at Play founding member takes on the dramatic role of the

king in ` III.'

http://www.burbankleader.com/articles/2008/03/19/entertainment/blr-

shakespeare19.txt

By Joyce Rudolph

Producers of Shakespeare at Play are keeping a promise to one company

member and fulfilling a dream of another with the production "

III " at The Colony Theatre in Burbank.

Actor Whitman expressed interest in playing III

18 years ago to Shakespeare at Play Executive Director Debbie Gates,

and she promised if they ever produced the play, he could.

This event is a special engagement of the company — which regularly

performs Shakespeare's works and other classic plays in the

Burbank Unified School District and produces Shakespeare in the Park

at Burbank's Lincoln Park each summer — in honor of Whitman, who has

a neurological disorder, Charcot-Marie-Tooth, that causes patients to

slowly lose normal use of their feet/legs and hands/arms as nerves to

the extremities degenerate and the muscles in the extremities become

weakened.

Members of the company have known one another for 20 years, and they

are coming together for this production in support of Whitman, Gates

said.

" We're doing this play to celebrate Whitman, " she said,

adding that such challenging roles may be more difficult for him in

the future.

Since King has some disfigurements, Whitman is

overemphasizing the problems he's having with his feet and adding a

limp to King 's walk.

Whitman, a founding member of Shakespeare at Play, has been

performing Shakespearean roles for the past 25 years, he said. His

favorite roles are Puck in " Midsummer Night's Dream, " Banquo

in " Macbeth " and Feste, which he played in Shakespeare at Play's 2007

production of " Twelfth Night " .

The challenge of playing King is mustering up the energy to

portray the wide range of emotions of Shakespeare's most ruthless

character, Whitman said.

" He embodies villainy, " Whitman said. " He gets to do and think what

many don't allow themselves to think and never act upon. It's the

dream role of a lifetime for an actor to portray this character. It

requires a high degree of skill with Shakespeare's words and

language. "

The language is one of the reasons director A. Schoenberg, is

drawn to the play, he said.

" You can't avoid loving it, if you love Shakespeare, " he said. " It's

such a beautifully written play. There is no waste in it. It's packed

full of wonderful language. "

As Whitman has anticipated portraying , Schoenberg has always

wanted to direct the play, Gates said.

" He has been wanting to direct ` III' for a long time, " Gates

said. " He had this vision and he told me about it, and I said `OK.

That will work'. I let people do this so they can spread their wings. "

Schoenberg is keeping true to the way the play was written, he said.

" I'm not taking a particular angle with the play, " he

said. " Sometimes you over-improve modern interpretations. Sometimes

approaching a play for its own sake is most rewarding. "

He has directed Shakespearean plays in Orange County, but this is his

directorial debut with Shakespeare at Play, he said.

This is the most gripping tragedy that Shakespeare at Play has

presented to the community, Gates said. The company's purpose is to

first educate the public about Shakespeare, and has started gradually

by producing a lot of his comedies during the Shakespeare in the Park

during the summer.

" You can't just throw ` III' and expect them to enjoy it, " she

said. " It's not going to work. You want to start by showing them

lighter fare, and plays that are easy to understand

including `Midsummer Night's Dream' and `Merry Wives' and then show

them history like Julius Caesar, and then you want to hit them with

tragedy. "