American Shakespeare Center in Staunton, Va. offers simple, authentic experience

STAUNTON, Va. - In this little town in the Shenandoah Valley, near the curvaceous Blue Ridge Mountains, surrounded by nature, history, and culture, a doughty band of actors bring Shakespeare alive - the way actors did in Shakespeare's day.

The American Shakespeare Center, specializing in "original staging practices" of Renaissance drama, is seeking to join the Oregon Shakespeare Festival in Ashland, Ore., and the Utah Shakespearean Festival in Cedar City, Utah, as "destination theater" - drama as an anchor for regional vacations.

Ashland and Cedar City are lovely - but Staunton and its region, the Shenandoah Valley, have even more to offer, from its historic downtown district and nearby Civil War battlefields to the Blue Ridge Mountains and popular Luray Caverns.

Staunton (pronounced Stanton - no one seems to know why) is a city of about 24,000 in northwest-central Virginia. This 18th-century regional trading post grew in importance when the railroads came, making it an important supply station during the Civil War - the era of much of its downtown architecture. It has reinvented itself as an arts and culture destination, with the ASC as its heart since 2000.

On a long weekend in February, my wife and I made the five-hours-and-change drive for a Renaissance blowout. We saw Ben Jonson's The Alchemist, Christopher Marlowe's Doctor Faustus, and Shakespeare's Twelfth Night. They were accessible and vigorous. The audience roared at Jonson's acid satire, thrilled to Marlowe's booming language, and chuckled at Shakespeare's comedy of love.

"This isn't crushed-velvet Shakespeare," says Jim Warren, artistic director and co-founder. "We're trying to re-create the stage conditions he was writing for. That's why people come - it's the only one of its kind in the world."

What makes the ASC different? Start with its home, the Blackfriars Playhouse. Named and designed for the indoor theater used by Shakespeare's troupe, it's the only such replica in the world.

The outdoor Globe is far more famous, but the King's Men (Shakespeare's bunch) expanded to the Blackfriars in 1608, to attract a better, wealthier clientele. Shakespeare's last six plays, including The Winter's Tale and The Tempest, were probably written with the Blackfriars in mind.