DATE: Thursday, March 20, 1997              TAG: 9703200050

SECTION: DAILY BREAK             PAGE: E3   EDITION: FINAL 

TYPE: Theater review

SOURCE: BY MAL VINCENT, THEATER CRITIC 

                                            LENGTH:   63 lines

ELEGANT BLOOM GIVES JOYFUL PERFORMANCE

SHE PLOTS murder, pleads for her life, makes love to a donkey and deftly handles her confused lovers.

It's a lot for any woman to handle on a single evening.

Claire Bloom, elegant beauty of the movies and classical craftswoman of the theater, took the stage of Ogden Hall Tuesday evening for what she called ``Women in Love'' or ``A Portrait of Some of Shakespeare's Leading Ladies.'' She made it clear why she is considered one of the leading actresses of the English-speaking world.

If anything, though, this was an evening of mountain tops when occasional visits to the valleys would have helped the pacing. It was a kind of animated Reader's Digest, with Bloom taking on five of Shakespeare's most interesting heroines - not all of whom were in what we would conventionally call ``love.'' This was no valentine. It was more a twister.

She portrayed not only the women, but also played other roles and outlined the plots. It was a juggling display that would daunt the most daring performer.

She succeeded more as an actress than as a storyteller, for the Shakespeare ``plots'' were lost to the unknowing. This was an evening made memorable by the outside knowledge and interests the audience brought to it. It was an evening not able to stand on its own.

The evening was also proof that the movies never quite knew what to do with Bloom. Her image was often as an elegant, porcelain beauty who suggested aristocracy, even when she played a pirate's wench in ``The Buccaneer.'' On stage, she is a dynamo.

This one-woman show had the blessing of spontaneity. Pleasingly, it had not been rehearsed to the point of letter-perfect robotism. Instead, Bloom moved dangerously from the reading stand to the larger stage, occasionally dashing back for a cue, sometimes adjusting the stand in midsentence.

Bloom's close-cropped ebony hair was flung about with no concern for coiffure. She occasionally ran her hands through it, throwing looks to the wind.

She takes no guff from an audience. During one interval, when an audience member was heard talking, Bloom asked haughtily, ``Can I not be heard?'' The intruder to the spell was abruptly hushed - something that less-timid performers have been unable to do in Ogden Hall.

This evening marked a return to the Hampton Arts Commission's Great Performer Series (which often lives up to its title). Bloom appeared on this same stage in the 1992-93 season in a similar one-woman show, which she called ``Then Let Men Know.'' That title turns out to be prophetic because she has let everyone know about her own troubled romantic life in the best-seller ``Leaving a Doll's House,'' which is the talk of the literary world because of its honesty and self-deprecation. Her admirers may well prefer the earlier, less scandalous, volume ``Limelight and After.''

Seldom are we treated to the unbridled commitment that Bloom displayed. She clearly loves the words of Shakespeare and is determined that we shall share in her joy. ILLUSTRATION: Graphic

THEATER REVIEW

Claire Bloom in ``Women in Love''

When & Where: Tuesday, Ogden Hall at Hampton University

Presented by: The Hampton Arts Commission's Great Performer

Series, directed by Michael P. Curry

Send Suggestions or Comments to webmaster@scholar.lib.vt.edu