STAGE

Garden Grove’s battle over the arts took a surprising twist this week as a key opponent of the Grove Shakespeare Festival in the city’s government reversed himself, paving the way for an additional $15,000 city grant to the embattled theater troupe. Councilman Raymond T. Littrell, who last month declared Shakespeare’s plays too sophisticated for his “hard-hat community,” joined Grove Theatre Company supporters in approving a city staff recommendation for funds to complete the season this summer. But that was the only action a majority of the five-member council could agree on. It rejected a potpourri of motions intended to resolve the troupe’s immediate fiscal predicament--from subsidizing the fall season of contemporary plays, to phasing out city support altogether over five years, to placing the matter before Garden Grove voters in November.