Stage director Warner Shook enjoys the luxury of being choosy

Stepping into Warner Shook's place high up in a downtown apartment tower, you discover one reason he's still in Seattle. It's the view, stupid.

The wall-to-wall Western vista in Shook's pad offers a panorama of ferries crossing Puget Sound, sunsets gray and pastel, Olympic Mountains emerging from the clouds. His enviable digs must have factored into Shook's decision to stay in Seattle (he also maintains a New York pied-à-terre), after stepping down as artistic head of Intiman Theatre five years ago.

But the respected stage director supplies other reasons too. "Seattle is a town that's manageable, beautiful, yet it has all the amenities of a big city," says the Alabama-bred Shook, whose family mining fortune allows him to live where he wants. "I love that. And I love that I can walk to work."

Work these days is a rehearsal hall blocks away at ACT Theatre, where Shook is preparing the Seattle debut of "Enchanted April." The Broadway play by Matthew Barber is based on a hit 1992 film and Elizabeth von Arnim's witty 1922 novel. And it's quite a different cup of tea from Shook's last ACT show: a searing 2003 staging of Edward Albee's Tony Award-winning drama, "The Goat."

"Enchanted April" depicts four discontented Englishwomen who take a sun-drenched, life-enhancing sojourn to Italy. "The Goat," by contrast, concerns the shattering of a modern New York family after the husband reveals a shocking sexual affair.

Yet both plays are natural choices for Shook — a meticulous stage artist who has a proven flair for literate British plays and Albee scripts, and is admittedly a romantic at heart.

"I don't think you can beat the healing power of love," the lean, bluejeans-clad Shook suggests one morning, before rehearsal. "And how many plays like 'Enchanted April' are there? Plays about middle-age couples who've grown disenchanted with each other, and then fall in love all over again? It's a little like Sondheim's 'A Little Night Music' ... without the songs!"

To the suggestion that the play is being grabbed up by regional theaters because it's lightweight Edwardian dress-up fare, Shook retorts, "You can do the summer-stock version of this, or you can investigate it and make it fulfilling. Some people don't realize the story is also about the devastating impact of World War I on Great Britain, the grief and sorrow people faced. I'm trying to fill in some of that history."

"Enchanted April" also allows Shook to work with local actors he knows well (Michael Winters, R. Hamilton Wright), and gifted Seattle thespians he's directing for the first time (Suzanne Bouchard, Julie Briskman, Deborah Fialkow).

Bouchard, who plays the blossoming English matron Rose, confirms Shook can be "very tough" and demanding with actors, a trait well-known since his first directing job here in 1985. (He staged the zany comedy "Beyond Therapy," at Empty Space Theatre.)

"But you know," amplifies Bouchard, "I like how tough he is. He really makes you work, and it's all for the good of the play."

"Warner works very hard, and he gets results," chimes in ACT artistic director Kurt Beattie. "He's always very attentive to both the actors and the text."

Shook cops to his perfectionism ("I just want people to be as good as they can be, and I'm as hard on myself as on anyone else"). But he insists he tries to couple rigor with respect.

He certainly has cultivated long friendships with many performers he admires. He talks happily about mounting a recent benefit production in Los Angeles of the play "Lettice and Lovage," with TV-film star Angela Lansbury. He counts actresses Lynn Redgrave and Frances Conroy (of TV's "Six Feet Under") as good friends. And on Shook's bathroom wall is a fan letter from Stacy Keach, whom he may direct in a potential New York staging of Conor McPherson's "Dublin Carol."

Next January, Shook repeats his rendition of "The Goat" at L.A.'s Mark Taper Forum. He has his eye on other projects — and a dream-list of works by Chekhov, Tennessee Williams and such glamour-gal vintage comedies as "Dinner at Eight" and "The Women."

"Someone once called me the George Cukor of regional theater," he says, amused by the comparison to one of Hollywood's legendary directors of so-called "women's pictures."

But Shook, in his mid-50s, admits he's less driven now than when he was dashing between theater and TV jobs earlier in his life. These days he reserves quality time for his new significant other, an East Coast antiques dealer, and says, "I'm very picky about the jobs I take. Luckily I can afford to be."

Will he apply for the top spot at Seattle Repertory Theatre, which current artistic director Sharon Ott vacates soon? Shook shakes his head vigorously. Gazing out at that amazing view from his living room, he explains, "I don't like all the meetings and fund-raising you have to do as head of a theater. And money is getting so tight, because we aren't supporting our artists in this country.

"Plus you know what? I just love to direct. For me, it's a life-long learning experience."

Misha Berson: mberson@seattletimes.com