Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: WEDNESDAY, June 28, 1995 TAG: 9506280014
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: KEVIN KITTREDGE STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
And do such bitter business as the day would quake to look on."
Yeah, yeah, right.
Hamlet's back.
The prince of Denmark - perhaps the most famous, certainly the least decisive of the many deathless creations of the Bard - the on-again, off-again avenger, who last appeared in Roanoke in a Mill Mountain Theatre production of 1993, begins a new run at Virginia Western Community College's Whitman Auditorium on Friday night.
"Hamlet," which will be performed this weekend and next, kicks off the just-organized Roanoke Valley Shakespeare Festival. Organizers hope the famous talker - assisted by Queen Gertrude, Claudius the king, the ghost, Ophelia, Polonious and all the rest - will begin what will become an annual Roanoke festival of Shakespeare's plays.
Tentative plans already have been made to perform "Twelfth Night" later this summer.
Director and prime mover Bart McGullion has been a professional actor, writer and director most of his life - but aside from a couple of productions in his youth, never got around to doing Shakespeare, he said.
"It took me a long time to have the courage to tackle it," said McGullion, 58. "I guess this is my initiation. I thought if I was going to do something, why not tackle the most difficult, and see?"
The production features McGullion's son and frequent collaborator, Jeffrey, in the title role, veteran actress Barbara Johnson in the role of Queen Gertrude, and Johnson's daughter, Abbey, as Ophelia. Johnson is an actress with numerous credits locally, including a one-actress drama in which she played the Virgin Mary, performed at Virginia Western late last year.
The king is played by Bill Capps, who has performed in Showtimers productions. The cast includes other local actors as well, and a few students with no stage experience.
So far, all are running strictly on hope.
"You've heard of 'low budget'? This is 'no budget,'" joked Robert McCleary, audio/ visual technician for the college, and unofficial manager of the auditorium. The joke is unfortunately accurate: The stage sets and costumes for "Hamlet" were all cobbled together from scrap lumber, half-full paint cans and other odds and ends left over from previous Virginia Western productions.
"I'm very frugal," McCleary explained.
Performances of "Hamlet" will be free.
McGullion has directed other Virginia Western productions and may become an adjunct professor there in the fall, according to McCleary.
Johnson, who had never worked with him before, called McGullion "a colorful, larger-than-life character" who is apt to tell a story at any moment and has bursts of inspiration that often send him charging toward the stage. "I have never seen any director nurture actors as well as this one does," Johnson added. "I think he has a tremendous amount to offer me as an actress."
Johnson said there has been "a complete absence of ego" on the set. Of the production's Hamlet, 29-year-old Jeff McGullion, she said, "I've never seen anybody work so hard in my life."
Johnson also said she knew from the beginning that "Hamlet" would be a no-budget production - but didn't care. "I didn't want to miss it. I would have come out just for the privilege of saying the words."
As for the final product - well, no one is promising the Royal Shakespeare Company here.
But Johnson stressed there will, after all, be swordplay and a dance (by her daughter, Abbey; recorder music was written for the production by Joyce Kernodle).
"I can't promise you any person in the show will be brilliant," Johnson said. "But I think, taken as a whole, it is certainly going to be an animated, exciting performance."
Said McGullion:
"It's going to be interesting."
Roanoke Valley Shakespeare Festival: Fri.-Sun. and July 8-9, Va. Western Community College. 384-6946.
by CNB