THE BARD AS YOU LIKE HIM, ALL OVER L.A.

Byline: Reed Johnson Staff Writer

Where there's a Will, L.A. has a way. But it also has some ways to go.

Not that the reticent poet of Stratford-on-Avon lacks a devoted following here in Paradise-on-the-Pacific. Far from it.

From Glendale and Pasadena to Palos Verdes, Costa Mesa, Topanga Canyon and Thousand Oaks, you'll find Shakespeare productions throughout Southern California catering to many different tastes, incomes brackets and levels of expertise in iambic pentameter.

``There does seem to be kind of a crowd of Shakespeare junkies that'll come see it, wherever it is, and we seem to have some of them,'' laughingly says Gillian Bagwell, founder and artistic director of the 4-1/2-year-old Pasadena Shakespeare Company, which operates out of a 74-seat, 3,400-square-feet storefront in a Pasadena shopping mall, between a Foot Locker and a Macy's department store.

What you won't find here is a resident, financially well-endowed Shakespeare festival, such as those that thrive in such culturally out-of-the-way enclaves as Cedar City, Utah, and Ashland, Ore.

Though Shakespeare's texts remain the alpha and omega of such local ensembles as the Pasadena Shakespeare Company and 9-year-old A Noise Within, the lauded Glendale troupe that will soon be relocating to California State University, Los Angeles, Shakespeare remains something of a fair-weather playwright in the Southland.

Some companies, such as Shakespeare Festival/L.A. and the Los Angeles Women's Shakespeare Company, both of which generally receive strong reviews for their performances, produce only one show each per year.

Others, like Theatricum Botanicum, the much-loved Topanga Canyon outdoor amphitheater where Shakespeare's works have been produced regularly since 1973, and the fledgling Kingsmen Shakespeare Festival, operate only during the summer months.

``It does seem odd that a place with the size of L.A. doesn't have a year-round festival,'' says Lane Davies, the television actor who is co-artistic director with Michael Arndt of the Kingsmen festival. The third annual festival will open a free five-week, 14-performance run of ``Macbeth'' and ``The Comedy of Errors'' at California Lutheran University in Thousand Oaks on Friday.

``The problem is that (Shakespeare) is really expensive to do,'' says Davies, who'll be playing the lead in ``Macbeth.'' ``There's a lot of people in the plays, which means if you're doing it professionally, there's a lot of contracts, a lot of costumes.''

To help draw customers, the Kingsmen festival, which Cal Lutheran co-presents, offers such family-oriented pre-performance activities as strolling musicians, Maypole dancers, singing groups, dancing, juggling and swordplay demonstrations. All take place in the bucolic park that surrounds the outdoor stage.

Arndt, a professor at the university, expects this year's two productions to draw about 7,000 people through July 25.

``It's a relaxed atmosphere,'' he says. ``A university provides, I think, a more luxurious atmosphere than I think many L.A. theaters provide.''

Luxury wasn't in the budget when Ben Donenberg launched Shakespeare Festival/L.A. in 1984 with a production of ``Twelfth Night'' in Pershing Square, across from the Regal Biltmore Hotel in downtown Los Angeles.

Donenberg, a Juilliard-trained actor, had performed on Broadway and in Shakespeare in the Park with Joseph Papp's New York Shakespeare Festival. He says he even got a mention in a New York Times review of ``Henry IV, Part 1,'' because his character, a minor nobleman named Sir Michael, got tossed into a moat - actually, a Central Park lake.

``So I got noticed as the guy being thrown into the moat, right my first year out of Juilliard.''

Hardly soaking with money, Shakespeare Festival/L.A. initially had to make do with props and costumes it had ``borrowed'' during what Donenberg laughingly calls a nighttime ``guerrilla raid'' on the Old Globe Theatre in San Diego. (Donenberg says that Jack O'Brien, the Globe's artistic director, has since become his Shakespearean mentor.)

``Pershing Square, unbeknownst to me until we got into Pershing Square, was a haven for homeless people. And so they became a large component of our audience,'' Donenberg recalls.

``About two or three performances in, a bunch of the homeless people from the park came up to us - we had to do it in the daytime because we didn't have any lights, we didn't have any sound equipment - they came up to us with these huge garbage bags filled with aluminum cans to pay us. They said, `We don't have money, but we really love your show, and we wanted to thank you.' We told them that was OK, they could keep the cans. And that's what gave us the idea to collect food for the needy instead of charging admission.''

Since then, Shakespeare Festival/L.A. has grown into an established organization with significant corporate and government financial support, an $800,000 budget, and extensive educational outreach programs that have helped train 150 area school instructors in teaching Shakespeare, as well as offering performances, books and teaching materials to thousands of local students.

The festival also has some well-placed Hollywood friends such as Sally Field, Rita Wilson and Tom Hanks, all of whom have taken part in Shakespeare benefit readings.

While the festival is ``still almost a one-show pony,'' Donenberg believes it will someday be able to expand into year-round productions.

``I kind of credit the longevity of Shakespeare Festival to our ability to spark the imagination of a grass-roots support network,'' he says. ``We have hundreds of teachers who will write letters on our behalf, hundreds of them.''

For companies that operate for longer stretches of the year, Shakespeare's plays are a foundation around which an entire season can be built. The Knightsbridge Theatre in Old Town Pasadena, for example, has no less than seven of the Bard's works in its current season, jostling alongside everything from ancient Greek tragedies to modern British sex farces.

``He's the standard against which other classical playwrights are measured,'' says Art Manke, co-artistic director of A Noise Within along with Geoff Elliott and Julia Rodriguez Elliott.

One thing Southern California has going for it, more than any other city, is probably the world's biggest pool of actors, including a number who've spent years brushing up on their Shakespeare and other classical playwrights.

``I think what we're doing here, we could never do in Idaho or Iowa because there are so many actors here who have been trained,'' Rodriguez Elliott says.

CAPTION(S):

2 photos

Photo: (1) In a past production, the Pasadena Shakespeare Company gave ``Othello'' a modern military setting.

(2) A Noise Within, whose Shakespeare offerings have included ``Twelfth Night,'' is planning a move to California State University, Los Angeles.