Claire Bloom is reluctant to make any pronouncements on the durabilty of Shakespeare's characters. "I couldn't sum it up in a word," she says. It's early morning in New York and the English-born actress is abut to depart for an out-of-town engagement, presumably to perform her show, 'Shakespeare's Women'.

Bloom once told a reporter: "He knew everything about women. He knew everything about everything." Tomorrow night at the Winter Garden Theatre, she will be fronting for the Bard as host of the Shakespearean Gala, a World Stage Festival event. Bloom regards it as a get-together with old friends, actors she's encountered at Stratford and elsewhere in Canada, all of them bred on Shakespeare. But, to paraphrase Bloom, what stage actor wasn't?

The lineup of talent includes Colm Feore, John Neville, Christopher Plummer, Brent Carver and R.H. Thompson. "It's really honouring actors who've made a contribution in Canada, "Bloom explains."

Toronto is familiar territory for her. She was last in town in 1998, to make a TV movie with Gene Wilder called The Lady in Question. Bloom played Emma Sachs. It's a far cry from her stage appearances here, most notably in Ibsen's The Doll House, at the Royal Alexandra Theatre in the 70's.

Indeed, Bloom has been hailed as the best interpreter of Ibsen's women, but her embodiments of Shakespeare's women will just as easily keep her in the annals of theatre history. From Ophelia to Gertrude, to Viola and Rosalind, or Portia from Julius Caesar, Bloom's Shakespearean heroines span an incredible range.

First seen on screen in 1952, opposite Charlie Chaplin in Limelight, Bloom has scarcely been out of the limelight, or the klieglights, since. Rather like Sir Laurence Olivier, with whom she performed in Richard III, Bloom transforms herself so that she's scarcely recognizable from one role to the next.

Born in London in 1931, she had an aunt who was an actress and a mother who loved theatre. She first appeared on stage at 15, and now divides her life between London and New York, "depending on what I'm working on." When work hasn't come to her, she has put herself on the road.

Bloom has also written two memoirs. The second, Leaving a Doll's House (1996), charted the rise and fall of her marriage to novelist Philip Roth. Right now, she says, "I'm trying to write Enter The Actress, about early women on stage. The history will go "all the way back to the boys" who first performed female roles in Shakespeare's plays.

CAPTIONS: CLAIRE BLOOM: Regards tomorrow night's gala as a get-together with old friends.