Casey Biggs, Back on The Boards

By Jane Horwitz
Special to The Washington Post
Tuesday, September 30, 2003; Page C05

Casey Biggs is back. The dashing, Juilliard-trained leading man in a long list of Arena Stage shows between 1985 and 1995 stars as Oberon in the Ken Ludwig spoof "Shakespeare in Hollywood." The fantasy, set during the production of Max Reinhardt's 1935 film of "A Midsummer Night's Dream," runs at Arena through Oct. 19.

Theatergoers haven't been shy about reminiscing with him. "They usually come up and talk about specific performances . . . and that's moving, actually," Biggs says. "I didn't realize the work had such resonance."

The actor takes center stage as the "real" Oberon, the immortal, mystical form of Shakespeare's fairy king. Much of the humor grows out of watching Biggs as a demigod strain his dignity trying to get the hang of movies while falling poignantly in love with the merely mortal ingenue.

Oberon is "the only one who has a journey in the play. . . . If you do not feel he has a sense of loss at the end of the play, then the play does not work," Biggs says.

His years with the Acting Company, Juilliard's young-professional troupe, and at Arena give the 48-year-old Toledo, Ohio, native his greatest sense of professional pride. "I feel that I came of age here," says Biggs of Arena, where he played in "Happy End," "Execution of Justice," "Long Day's Journey Into Night," "All the King's Men" and "It's a Wonderful Life."

Biggs also directs now, and staged "Hamlet," "Richard III," "True West" and "Speed the Plow" in Los Angeles. He'll soon direct "The Two Gentlemen of Verona" for the Acting Company. He recently appeared in New York with Cherry Jones in "Pride's Crossing" and did a City Center "Encores!" version of the musical "No Strings." That led to a role in "The Good German" at the Westport Country Playhouse in Connecticut.

The boss there is Joanne Woodward, and her spouse was around a lot, says Biggs. Having Paul Newman poke his head in your dressing room to say, "Kick butt tonight, kid. Want a beer?" isn't a bad backstage story to own.

Since he decamped to Los Angeles, Biggs has done lots of television guest spots and had parts in films like "The Pelican Brief" and "Broken Arrow," in which he appeared mostly on the cutting-room floor. He spent three years on the "Star Trek" spinoff "Deep Space Nine" as Damar, an alien villain who "looked like a bulldog lizard -- three hours of makeup." Imbuing sci-fi dialogue with meaning, he says, demands classical training: "You have to be of Shakespearean proportions to do that stuff."

But the stage clearly still beckons. "[In] all that television, I can't think of two or three things I can hold up and say I'm really proud of," Biggs says. From his Arena years, however, "I can't think of something I wouldn't hold up to say, this is what I do."