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If Shakespeare had been a hillbilly ... Mail Tribune / Bob Pennell Longtime Oregon Shakespeare Festival actor Sandy McCallum, shown here in costume for a festival production, has retold "King Lear" in hillbilly style and released it on CD. Hooo, doggies! It�s backwoods Lear By Bill Varble Sandy McCallum was puttering in his garden one day last spring when the words started coming. "I hum to myself," the 73-year-old actor says. "Suddenly I was saying: �Now back in mythic England was this king, the name o� Lear ...� " Sort of a Shakespeare-meets-the-Beverly-Hillbillies thing. Thinking maybe he�d write a few verses for his grandchildren, McCallum mentioned the idea to fellow Oregon Shakespeare Festival actor Andrea Frye. "You have to do the whole thing," Frye said. The result is a new CD, "Jaw Jabberin� with Shakespeare," a sort of hip-hick version of Shakespeare�s play about human frailty. "It tickled me so much," says Frye, who appears with McCallum this season in "The Night of the Iguana." "I told him it had to be a CD." "King Lear" isn�t exactly a rib tickler. An old man rejects one of his daughters � the only honest one � after taking her frankness for lack of affection. He winds up wandering in the wilderness, outcast and insane, blinded by pride to the difference between good and evil. Not only does Lear descend into madness, which we might forgive, the old codger seems to lack any sense of his daughter Cordelia�s having a life of her own. "Yeah, it�s dark," McCallum says. "But it�s probably easier to make humor out of that than a comedy." The CD runs about 37 minutes and covers the whole story of the mythic king of Britain, every scene, every major character, all in McCallum�s rich baritone. The festival�s resident composer, Todd Barton, helped in the recording process, and the festival�s Jennifer Donahoe pitched in on graphics. McCallum�s version of the tale brims with homey metaphors like "twisted as a pretzel" and "vicious as a rabid wolverine." Lear faces "a doozy of a storm" and "them weasel daughters." When the hurricane torments him, it�s "roarin� like a bear." As Lear rages at the storm, "Half his clothes is blowed away/and the rest ain�t fit to wear." McCallum came to the festival 11 years ago. He was directing "Of Mice and Men" in San Diego when Warner Shook, who was directing "And a Nightingale Sang" at the festival, offered him a role. He turned it down. "You just make snap decisions," his wife, Sylvia, said at the time. "Think about it." McCallum did. He called Shook, and 15 minutes later the OSF�s artistic director, Jerry Turner, was on the phone. Turner went south and talked to McCallum one night until 2 a.m. "All you have to do is say yes," he said. He said yes. McCallum grew up in Saskatchewan, Canada, a farm boy in the Great Depression. "Oh, look, Mama," he said one day. "The crops are getting ripe, and it�s only June." His mother, crying, said, "No, they�re drying up." "I cry when I think about it," McCallum says. He had no formal training as an actor. He worked as a meteorologist attached to the Canadian Air Force in World War II. In the Yukon, he wrote humorous verse about prospectors and trappers. After the war he worked in radio ("They said I had a good voice"), then went to a small TV station as the weatherman. He started doing kid shows, interviews, comedy. He joined a community theater in the little town of Coaldale, Alberta, and won an acting award in 1950. He was discovered in 1963 by Sir Tyrone Guthrie, who had left London�s Old Vic Theatre and founded the Shakespeare Festival at Stratford, Ontario, Canada. "He said, �This is what you should be doing, dahling,� " McCallum says. When Guthrie founded the Tyrone Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis, Minn., McCallum came aboard as an actor. The Guthrie was widely seen as the most important regional theater in the United States. McCallum and his wife, Sylvia, have been married 51 years. "I�ve never been out of work," he says. "She raised five kids and supported me. I don�t know another woman who�d do it." "You better not," Sylvia says. McCallum this season has been playing Jonathan Coffin in "The Night of the Iguana�� and Gremio in "The Taming of the Shrew." He�s been Polonius in "Hamlet," "Stephano in "The Tempest," Ulrik Brendel in "Rosmersholm," the stage manager in "Our Town," Capt. Shotover in "Heartbreak House." "I am in total awe of him," Frye says. "The quality of work he does, his energy." McCallum�s nearly finished a jaw-jabberin� version of "Henry V" and says he has "Hamlet" pretty much on the home stretch. Could he give a hint of what the famous soliloquy will sound like? Sure. That rich voice becomes the conflicted prince. "Am I gonna do it, or ain�t I?" Sit a spell and listen Here�s a taste of Sandy McCallum�s redneck "King Lear": Now back in mythic England was this king, the name o� Lear. He was gettin� pretty ancient and his thinkin� weren�t too clear. He was wantin� to retire, but he has to find a way To live in ease and comfort without an IRA. So he calls his court together and he says, "Now here�s the scoop. "I�m gettin old and gimpy, and I just ain�t in the loop, "So I been cogitatin� things, and this here�s what I found. "I can save a lot of scrappin� when I�m six feet underground "If I divvy up my kingdom now by slicin� it in three "And give my daughters each a chunk but first I wanna see "How much each daughter loves me and the one that says it best "Will get the biggest chunk and so on with the rest." 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