Colm Feore plays Coriolanus, launching the Stratford Festival's season Monday night.

LONDON, Ont. - Colm Feore refuses to bask in the spotlight thrown by a major Stratford Festival star.

"It's not about me and should never be about me. I'm basically a boring guy. It's the characters I'm playing who are pretty interesting," says the Boston-born and Windsor-raised actor who's portraying the title roles of Shakespeare's Coriolanus, which launches the festival's 2006 season Monday night, and Moliere's Don Juan.

"I'm always so humbled and delighted to be doing the works of Shakespeare, Moliere and these other great writers. My job, as an actor, is to serve them," says the 47-year-old performer, who's also cast as the nefarious thief Fagin in Oliver!

Feore's modest attitude is no surprise to his wife, best friend and biggest fan.

"Colm's always very clear that he's not there to serve himself. He's there to serve the show," says Donna Feore, who's directing Oliver! and choreographing Don Juan.

"Having Colm as your leading actor is a gift to any director. He brings so much experience and confidence to the rehearsal hall and his enthusiasm is contagious. It raises the level of everyone around him."

The Feores, who first met at the festival in 1990 and were married four years later, live in Stratford with their three children. Now entering their 15th festival season, they agree that working together hasn't put any strain on their personal relationship.

"I guess it helps that Colm and I are both insane. We work in the same industry, but we do different things," says Donna, a Prince George, B.C., native who began her professional stage life as a dancer with the Pacific Ballet

Company. "And we try hard not to bring our work home with us."

She adds that directing and choreographing the 45-member cast in the musical Oliver! is the biggest challenge of her career and was made easier by the support of her husband.

"Colm's an avid learner himself and I've learned so much from him. I get to pick his brains. Being a director doesn't mean you have all the answers."

The admiration between the couple is plainly mutual.

"Donna's an enormously thorough director," says Feore.

"Her standards are very high and she takes no crap from anyone, including me. She sets the tone for the cast. For instance on Oliver!, there's so many kids in the cast, she had a 'no-swearing-allowed' rule right from the beginning of rehearsals."

Dancing, says Donna, isn't one of her husband's most developed talents.

"He's a perfectionist in everything he does, whether it's acting, cooking or photography, so he wants to get it all right. But he's a flub. He's impeccable in so many things but he has this other, more awkward side," says Donna, who choreographed Stratford's 2002 hit production of My Fair Lady which starred her spouse as Prof. Henry Higgins.

Colm confesses his dancing shortcomings: "My best thing is moving quickly with the music and then falling down with style."

The actor is more at home with the dramatic aspects of legendary lover Don Juan, whom he defines as "a difficult, thorny guy who thumbs his nose at God" and the ancient Roman politician Coriolanus, "who has honour and a strict adherence to a moral structure."

To play the difficult role, Feore drew on his Gemini Award-winning portrayal of the title figure in Trudeau, CBC-TV's 2002 miniseries profiling former Canadian prime minister Pierre Trudeau.

"Just like Trudeau, Coriolanus refuses to bow to anyone," says Feore, who depicted Julius Caesar in the recent ABC miniseries Empire.

To meet the singing and dancing demands of the role in Oliver!, Feore relied heavily on his wife.

"I have such enormous faith in Donna and the journey quickly becomes too painful if you don't trust the director."

As for the duo's off-stage relationship, Feore playfully reveals the "secret" to marital bliss.

"To make the marriage last was to simply realize that I'm never right. I call it Zen and the art of yielding. It's not difficult to do because Donna's a whole lot smarter than I am and has such great judgement. I just admit that upfront and we avoid all that awful arguing."

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