New Old Globe

By Gerald Clarke

AS YOU LIKE IT by William Shakespeare

On March 8, 1978, an arsonist set fire to San Diego's Old Globe Theater, and within minutes the interior was completely gutted. Though no one could see it at the time, this act of pure malice was also a kind of favor: it roused the spirits of all those in San Diego who love a play, prompting them to build a new, far better theater. When the new Old Globe opened last month, they could see just how well their $6.5 million had been spent. Both the theater and the company please the eye and delight the mind.

Set in the middle of 1,400-acre Balboa Park, the mock-Elizabethan building looks from the outside somewhat the way Shakespeare's own Globe was supposed to look, with leaded windows, half-timbering and a second floor jutting out over the first. It is too cute, but it is not offensive. Whatever sins have been committed on the outside have been made up for on the inside, however, where Scenic Designer Richard Hay has devised what seems to be an ideal theatrical space: 581 comfortable seats for the audience, a thrust stage for the actors, and ample room for producers and directors to change sets and scenery.

As You Like It, one of Shakespeare's sunniest comedies, was an ideal first choice to show off the new house and its tenants. Directed by Executive Producer Craig Noel, who has been with the Old Globe almost since its inception in 1935, the production floats as serenely and effortlessly as the swans in the nearby zoo. Ellis Rabb, who also has a long association with the theater, is best as Jaques, that amusing figure who cherishes sadness and brags that he "can suck melancholy out of a song as a weasel sucks eggs." Almost no one else is less than capable. But perhaps the real star of the evening is Designer Hay, who stayed on after completing the interior of the theater to create a beautiful and beguiling Forest of Arden for the premiere production.

Before the fire, San Diego had little more than a sophisticated community playhouse in the Old Globe and in the 245-seat Cassius Carter Center Stage next door. That catastrophe forced it to rethink its commitment to theater and spurred it to establish a professional, Equity-scale company. Now, with the new Globe, the Carter and a new 620-seat outdoor stage, it has one of the best complexes in the U.S. Artistic Director Jack O'Brien has ambitious plans to make San Diego an important theatrical center, a rival of the Mark Taper Forum in Los Angeles and the American Conservatory Theater in San Francisco. That will take both time and effort, but O'Brien and his company have made a more than promising begining

-- By Gerald Clarke

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