Moore: DCTC's Hutton is every inch a King (Lear)

The Colorado Shakespeare Festival's 2010 season will feature John Hutton as King Lear, continuing a trend toward showcasing Denver Center Theatre Company veterans as guest actors.

The slate also will include safe-as-armor productions of "Our Town" and "The Fantasticks" — and producing artistic director Philip Sneed's not apologizing for giving people what they want.

"What else can we do when Americans for the Arts is predicting that, countrywide, we will lose 10 percent of all arts organizations in this economic downturn?" he said. "That's 10,000 arts agencies just — gone.

"Now is not the time to be doing really well-done plays that no one wants to see."

The outdoor shows will be "King Lear," "The Taming of the Shrew" and "Our Town." Indoors gets "Measure for Measure" and "The Fantasticks."

Hutton follows DCTC stalwarts Kim Staunton, Randy Moore and most recently Sam Gregory ("To Kill a Mockingbird") to Boulder during the DCTC's seasonal break. Hutton is a spry choice to play the decrepit old king, but Sneed says that will play in his favor.

"Lear begins the play very strong; a man stepping down in his prime," he said, "and it's only after his daughters slowly strip away his manhood, his kingship and his very soul that he's reduced to almost nothing.

"A lot of actors are really good in one half of the play, but not the other. John is young and strong and fit, and that will really play to the first half. But I think he's got the goods to deliver the rest as well. Remember, John Gielgud played this role in his 30s, so it's not about age."

Hutton, who played the Earl of Kent in the Denver Center's 2007 "Lear," is looking at the monster role as a learning experience, "and my apprenticeship begins with the Colorado Shakespeare Festival," he said.

Budget cuts forced Sneed to cut last season from nine performance weeks to six; he expects 2010 to be seven. Though the number of performances has been pared, he's steadily grown the all-important "percentage of capacity" figures in the 1,000-seat Mary Rippon Amphitheatre from 49 percent in 2007, to 58 in '08, to 73 in '09. "To Kill a Mockingbird" played to a whopping 80, though it had just seven performances.

Part of the appeal with "Mockingbird" was that audiences knew it well, but had never had a chance to see it on stage. "Our Town" and "The Fantasticks" have become even more increasingly popular in recent years. That's because Sneed believes professional theaters "have gotten off their high horses and realized these are great plays, and it's time we rescued them from the abyss of high-school theater and reclaimed them for the professional theater."

The only returning director is Lynne Collins ("Lear"). "Our Town" will be helmed by Victoria Erville, former artistic director of the African-American Shakespeare Company.