ALL THE PARK'S A STAGE REPERTORY FORMAT ENERGIZES SAN DIEGO'S POPULAR SHAKESPEARE FESTIVAL.

Byline: EVAN HENERSON Staff Writer

SAN DIEGO -- ``The man's a doofus!''

The comment came from the row directly behind me just as the lights came up to signal intermission at ``Othello.''

Not entirely clear was whether the patron attending a production of one of William Shakespeare's greatest tragedies was referring to Iago, the satanic right hand played by Karl Kenzler, or to Jonathan Peck, whose gullible Moor of Venice -- Othello -- Iago brings down with such gleeful ease.

Not that it much matters. The plays of Shakespeare have set San Diego audiences to talking for more than 71 years. That is especially true now, as the Old Globe Theatre's three-play Summer Shakespeare Festival gives theatergoers the chance to experience two of the Bard's best-known plays and a lesser-known gem, all in the space of a few days.

From mid-June through the first of October, Shakespeare positively takes over the Globe. Which is fitting since the San Diego institution takes its very name from the London playhouse where the Bard's works were originally performed.

Performing in repertory and rarely repeating the same play on consecutive evenings, a company of 26 actors alternates this summer between ``Othello,'' the fairy strewn romantic comedy ``A Midsummer Night's Dream,'' and ``Titus Andronicus,'' Shakespeare's earliest tragedy -- and certainly one of his bloodiest.

The stage is the Globe's Lowell Davies Festival Theatre, a 620-seat outdoor venue in Balboa Park that is only in use during the summer and never in the daytime. Overhead flight noise from planes arriving at the nearby San Diego International Airport is a fact of life here. Ditto the occasional exotic comment -- often well timed -- from a denizen of the San Diego Zoo, which abuts the back of the theater.

``The raven himself is hoarse that croaks the fatal entrance of Duncan under my battlements,'' Lady Macbeth declared during last summer's production of the Scottish play. And at the production I attended, a zoo sea lion took that precise opportunity to bark his opinion of murder, the Scottish throne and ravens hoarse and otherwise.

With the zoo, some 15 centrally located museums, a couple of strategic restaurants and any number of cultural offerings, one could easily spend an entire week in San Diego without ever leaving Balboa Park. And the Globe has become the park's crown jewel.

The birthplace of Broadway musicals ``The Full Monty,'' ``Dirty Rotten Scoundrels'' and ``How the Grinch Stole Christmas,'' the Globe won the Tony award for the top regional theater in 1984.

A tour of the theater's backstage facilities, scene and costume shop -- conducted at 10:30 a.m. on Saturday and Sunday, and by appointment -- is well worth it for those who want a peek behind the scenes.

But for all the Globe's recent Broadway transfers and success in musicals and new plays, it is Shakespeare that built this theater and Shakespeare that remains its calling card.

``Everybody seems to be going to see Shakespeare,'' marveled one of the employees at the Britt Scripps Inn, the Balboa Park-adjacent hotel where I spent three nights during my theater-going stay.

Indeed they are, and for good reason. With the return of the three-play repertory format in 2004, the Bard really is back.

Not that he was ever too much absent. The Globe began producing 50-minute versions of Shakespeare's plays in 1935. The stage went dark during World War II, when the park was used by the U.S. Navy, but the first season of what was then called the San Diego National Shakespeare Festival was held in 1949. By 1954, the three-play summer repertory festival was in full swing, with an occasional non-Shakespeare play joining the summer lineup.

That's still the case. Theatergoers not interested in the Bard this summer can catch Wendy Wasserstein's ``The Sisters Rosensweig'' (Globe mainstage) and John Strand's ``Lincolnesque'' (Cassius Carter Center Stage). A true theater junkie willing to attend weekend matinees could even catch all five plays over three days.

Performers who have waxed iambic in the works of Shakespeare over the years at the Globe include Marsha Mason, Christopher Reeve, Kelsey Grammer, Marcia Cross, Jon Voight, John Goodman, Dana Delany, JoBeth Williams, Hal Holbrook and Victor Garber.

Starting in 1984, high production costs forced the Globe to scale back its Shakespeare offerings to two plays per season, one at the beginning of the summer, one at the end. During the summer of 1994, the theater produced but a single Shakespeare play, ``Twelfth Night,'' on the indoor Globe stage.

In 2004, the Globe brain trust took a gamble, returning to the three-play repertory format. Appointed to oversee the venture as artistic director was Darko Tresnjak, who in 2002 had directed a well-received version of Shakespeare's ``Pericles'' at the Globe (the first time in the theater's history that play had been staged).

In his maiden season, Tresnjak directed ``Antony and Cleopatra'' and ``The Two Noble Kinsmen'' and rounded out the repertory with the comedy ``As You Like It.'' Not only did the crowds come, they clamored for more.

``I don't want to sound arrogant, but if the formula hadn't hit that first year, we wouldn't be doing it again,'' said Tresnjak, who this year is directing ``Midsummer'' and ``Titus Andronicus.''

``The first year, when we did `Two Noble Kinsmen,' I noticed that the house started smaller, and by the end, the show was selling out. We generated our own interest. People told me they appreciated seeing something they hadn't seen at the Globe before.''

The 2007 summer lineup -- ``Measure for Measure,'' ``Two Gentlemen of Verona'' and ``Hamlet'' -- hopes to capitalize on an influx of visitors to the park for the Natural History Museum's hosting of the Dead Sea Scrolls, beginning next June. It will be the theater's first ``Hamlet'' since Campbell Scott played the role in the summer of 1990. Tresnjak will direct.

But don't expect a celebrated name to be taking the role of the melancholy Prince of Denmark. Globe Shakespeare has never been about star casting. An actor who commits to the nearly four-

month repertory schedule (not including rehearsals) sacrifices the far more lucrative income that a television pilot or a movie would bring.

On the other hand, how richly paid is the performer who gets to play jealous Othello one night and ``Midsummer's'' hammy weaver Nick Bottom the next (as Peck does)? And Michael Drummond, 12, who plays young Lucius Andronicus in ``Titus'' and fairy trickster Puck in ``Midsummer,'' figures to have quite a tale to relate to his classmates on how he spent his summer vacation.

The repertory benefits to the audience are considerable as well. The actors are on the younger side -- many culled from the Globe's partnership with the University of San Diego's Professional Actor Training Program -- meaning the works feel fresher.

And try to find another theater company that's going to bloody its hands -- literally -- with a play that features every manner of death and dismemberment. ``Titus Andronicus'' is a bit gross, but Tresnjak's production -- set in contemporary times -- is hilarious and inventive, the highlight of the festival.

I caught the three plays over three consecutive midweek nights -- an experience I highly recommend -- and wrapped visits to favorite Balboa Park museums and exhibitions around each day. The crowds both in the park and at the theater are somewhat more manageable midweek -- though, this being summer, don't expect solitude.

The Globe also offers a series of free, pre-show ``Shakespeare in the Garden'' discussions over the summer.

There are, in short, considerably worse ways to get in a little summer culture.

evan.henerson(at)dailynews.com

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(1 -- 2 -- color) The drama unfolds in the Old Globe's open-air Lowell Davies Festival Theatre, above, at the annual Summer Shakespeare Festival in San Diego. At left, Jonathan Peck and Julie Jesneck perform in ``Othello.''