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∙LAKEWOOD, OHIO. The Great Lakes Shakespeare Festival has a fine Hamlet too, notable mainly for the breadth of its excellence. Hamlet himself is adequately played by Dennis Longwell, who finished at Yale four years ago, has earned a graduate degree in dramatic art at Northwestern, and has worked two seasons with the excellent Equity repertory company at Princeton. Perhaps too close in age to the academic world, he still has a lot of living to do before he can become a fully rounded Hamlet. Mario Siletti's Polonius is consummately aeolian. Emery Battis, once of Broadway (Winged Victory) and now a history professor at Rutgers, plays King Claudius with all the high colors of evil, villainy and cowardice that the role could possibly be made to display.
The Great Lakes group also does Henry VI (a compression of all three parts), Antony and Cleopatra, Richard III, Much Ado About Nothing and The Taming of the Shrew. The consistent high level of its productions is the achievement of Director Arthur Lithgow, long a professional man-about-Shakespeare, whose players are always well-drilled and speak their lines as if they understand the characters they are playing.
∙LOS ANGELES. Morris Carnovsky's King Lear, first seen at Stratford, Conn., last summer, has become an institution in itself, said to be even better than Paul Scofield's. Carnovsky-Lear is presently mounted in a straightforward and well-paced production staged by John Houseman for Hollywood's Pilgrimage Theater. The cast as a whole fully supports Carnovsky, and the outdoor setting is stunning. He shouts, "Blow, winds, and crack your cheeks! Rage! Blow!" at the sheer parapets of the Hollywood Hills—at least they turn into sheer parapets under the magical lighting of Broadway's Jean Rosenthal.
∙LOUISVILLE. Like New York, Louisville has free Shakespeare in its Central Park, with 1,500 permanent seats and open space for folding chairs, stools and blankets. Equity actors are the nucleus of the Carriage House Shakespearean Repertory Company, which this summer is doing The Taming of the Shrew, Macbeth, As You Like It and Julius Caesar. So far, the Courier-Journal has described the group's work as "vital," while the Times has limited its praise, saying only that "several scenes were skillfully, imaginatively staged."
∙MINNEAPOLIS. Given the tendency of Director Tyrone Guthrie to bejazz his productions, the present Henry V at the Tyrone Guthrie Theater might have been expected to whip out a .45 at Agincourt. But he does not—and Henry V is a palpable hit (TIME, May 22), more memorable for Guthrie's overall staging than for the at times unkingly performance of George Grizzard.