Globe Theatre

Guests who attend a star-studded premiere of Franco Zeffirelli's "Hamlet" at Mann's Village Theater at 7 in Westwood tonight won't be supporting just another movie adapted from a play by Shakespeare. They'll be helping re-create the theater in which many of his plays were first performed in the 16th Century. The Globe Theatre, on the south bank of London's Thames, is about to rise again. It burned down in 1613, 14 years after it was built.

Modernist architect Eugene Weston III was in his early 30s when he declared that "the house is the last of the handcrafted objects" in an industrial age. The year was 1956, and he argued in The Times that even a modest house could be "more beautiful and meaningful" if it was built with post-and-beam construction that opens up interiors and invites the outdoors in through walls of glass. A third-generation Los Angeles architect, Weston built a string of midcentury homes here before spending three decades with a San Diego firm known for such large-scale commissions as the Old Globe Theatre, San Diego Wild Animal Park and several major buildings at UC San Diego.

Theater May Not be Reconstructed: Shakespeare's original Globe Theatre, in Southwark, South London, may never see the light of day after an archeologists' report questioning the feasibility of excavation.

Acclaimed Broadway actor James Barbour has departed from a starring role in the upcoming production of Richard O'Brien's "The Rocky Horror Show" at the Old Globe Theatre in San Diego days after it was revealed locally that he admitted seducing a 15-year-old girl. Old Globe Executive Producer Lou Spisto said in a press release Thursday that Barbour is leaving the show, set to open Sept. 23, "due to issues with his wife's pregnancy. " Barbour, on his Facebook page, said the same: "As my amazing wife is progressing through the second pregnancy we've encountered some unexpected issues and I felt it vital to be with my family during this time.

Dance-a-Thon--The Kids Dance-a-Thon was placed under the wrong day in the Leisure Listings of Thursday's Calendar Weekend. The event takes place Saturday at the Globe Theatre at Universal Studios Hollywood from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m.

Jess Bravin's article "Shylock: The Stereotype Is Still a Problem" (June 5) revealed the vexation caused by the anti-Semitism contained in Shakespeare's "The Merchant of Venice." Staging this production in today's costumes, as is being done by the Oregon Shakespeare Festival and the Old Globe Theatre of San Diego, is a step toward increasing anti-Semitism within our own times, as if there were a lack of it. By bringing this 400-year-old play into modern times, the producers and directors imply that today's Jews are like Shylock and that any punishment is justified.

What am I looking forward to seeing this summer? All the shows that got past me this spring, starting with Taper Too's "Standup Tragedy." It transfers to the Taper mainstage on Thursday. Also--"Phantom of the Opera," despite the buildup (Ahmanson, Wednesday.) John Steppling's "Teenage Wedding"--a suspiciously cheerful title from our darkest playwright (Cast Theatre, July 1.) The Padua Hills Playwrights Playwrights Festival--where Steppling and Jon Robin Baitz got started (CSU Northridge, Aug. 6.)

Will Roberson, 36, the peripatetic off-Broadway stage director and playwright who guided several well-known productions at the Old Globe Theatre, the San Diego Repertory and the Gaslamp Quarter Theater, all in San Diego. He both directed and co-produced the musical "Suds" in 1989 at the Old Globe and then took it on the road nationally. In 1984 he won the Princess Grace Foundation Fellowship for directing, and served his residency at the Old Globe, where he was an assistant to John Houseman, Daniel Sullivan and others.

The historic Globe Theatre of London has been re-created inside the Palmdale Playhouse for this weekend's fourth annual Shakespeare Festival, which opens tonight with "The Taming of the Shrew." "It's going to be something new for our audience to be so close to the actors," technical director Tony Moore said. "The actors will seem much larger than life."

Queen Elizabeth II ventured into the world of her 16th century namesake Thursday at the opening of the reconstructed Globe Theatre, where Shakespeare once premiered many of his plays. In a style befitting Elizabeth I, the queen and Prince Philip came to the open-air theater on the south bank of the Thames by boat and were greeted by a trumpet flourish as they passed through its wrought-iron gates.

Theater producers won't stop in the name of love or anything else when it comes to churning out musical remakes of hit films. So here comes "The First Wives Club," which the Old Globe Theatre in San Diego said Friday would have its premiere July 15-Aug. 23 in a prelude to a planned Broadway run. It's adapted from the 1996 dumped-babes buddy picture starring Goldie Hawn, Diane Keaton and Bette Midler, and from the Olivia Goldsmith novel that preceded it. What's striking about "The First Wives Club" is its promise of an original score of new songs by Brian Holland, Lamont Dozier and Eddie Holland, the trio of Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductees who helped make Motown in the 1960s.

One could hardly call it a vintage year for new musicals, but there were small theatrical delights to be had, the best of which were marvelously unexpected. Here, in alphabetical order, are the memorable sleepers as well as the blockbuster and camp extravaganza that sweetened the annual mix: "after the quake," La Jolla Playhouse.

Full of unsympathetic characters and wild deviations of plot, Shakespeare's so-called problem plays are meditations on excess that helped shape the tragic vision of the masterpieces to come. In exploring the impossibility of ever reforming human nature or society, he sometimes paints himself into a corner (in the unfinished "Timon of Athens," for instance).

Appearances by Shakespeare's Globe Theatre from London, the Piccolo Teatro di Milano from Italy, "No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency" author Alexander McCall Smith, French actress Isabelle Huppert, and a group of friends and performers paying tribute to the late monologuist Spalding Gray will highlight the 2005-'06 UCLA Live season. The season, announced Wednesday, will consist of 72 events or about 120 performances, compared with 66 events comprising 138 performances in 2004-'05.

An alligator in a tuxedo is dancing across a stage singing in Italian. A pirate flourishes a sword. A girl falls to the stage, poisoned. Peter Pan bounds to her side. "Wendy," he exclaims, "como stai?" Shakespeare it is not, but the Bard would probably recognize the venue -- a faithful copy of England's famous Globe Theatre, set amid the lushness of Rome's beguiling Borghese Park. Actually, the theater is a replica of a replica, but a copy by any other name....

At first glance, "Blue/Orange" looks like one of those argumentative plays such as "Art," which also has a cast of three men. But the stakes in "Blue/Orange," at the Old Globe Theatre, are considerably higher. A man's life is on the line. He's a mental patient named Christopher (Teagle F. Bougere).

An alligator in a tuxedo is dancing across a stage singing in Italian. A pirate flourishes a sword. A girl falls to the stage, poisoned. Peter Pan bounds to her side. "Wendy," he exclaims, "como stai?" Shakespeare it is not, but the Bard would probably recognize the venue -- a faithful copy of England's famous Globe Theatre, set amid the lushness of Rome's beguiling Borghese Park. Actually, the theater is a replica of a replica, but a copy by any other name....

The summer schedule at Globe Theatres in San Diego includes the venue's first production of the William Shakespeare adventure story "Pericles, Prince of Tyre." The "Pericles" production will be staged in the outdoor theater from Aug. 31 to Oct. 6. Also on tap for the outdoor theater is a John Rando staging of "The Taming of the Shrew" (June 29-Aug. 4). Inside, the Old Globe Theatre will present Daniel J. Travanti in Arthur Miller's "All My Sons" (July 27-Aug.

When Globe Theatres director Jack O'Brien referred to "our Green Friend" in his program notes for "How the Grinch Stole Christmas!" he was no doubt aware that green means more than one thing. Now in its fourth profitable go-round at San Diego's Globe Theatres, this musical version of the Dr. Seuss classic means green, as in cash. Which is fine; who doesn't need cash? Amazingly, the famous Boris Karloff-narrated TV version came very close to being just as wonderful and slyly funny as Seuss' book.