Dangerous Common Sense

I keep saying that I don't like musicals. When I walked out of The Music Man grinning, humming, and full of "do you remember when Harold Hill..." comments, I thought I was on an unnatural high. 

I was sure that after a day or so, the holes in the melodic fabric would appear, and I would become a happy, jaded nay-sayer again:  "Well, there really is only one song in the whole show, you know."

I assumed that a dramatic, more serious play would jolt me awake as the OSF season wore on.  I would downgrade my five-star reaction to a suitable, sedate 3 or 4, and The Music Man would recede into its proper middle-of-the-pack place in the season's rankings.

But no.  It's been close to two months since I saw the show.  I have now attended all of the plays I bought tickets for and published my reviews.  And, The Music Man is still on top in absolute quality and in first place in my 2009 Season list.
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Okay, I admit it.  Musical or not musical is not the key. 

I like good theater, and sometimes — very, very occasionally — good theater occurs when there is also music on stage.  That's what's happening at OSF's The Music Man.

Ozdachs Rating:

Oh, damn! Another performance ranking Production: Good, Play: Awful.

I was happily anticipating this Depression Era play directed by the same Libby Appel who resurrected  A View from the Bridge and provided an important and satisfying show last year.

That Arthur Miller "period piece" was heartbreakingly current. 

Unhappily, this year's model resonates with 2009 with shared bad economic times, but it clunks down the street alone with Odets' polemics and immutable characters.

The winning philosophical views of life in Paradise are those of an embittered communist-sounding furnace repairman, Mr. Pike played by Mark Murphey, and the budding gangster Kewpie (Mark Bedard).  These are the two whose world views prevail at the end of the play. Kewpie is an action guy, and so Odet gives Pike the coherent, detailed, eyes-open commentary on the state of the world.

And the state of Pike's and Odet's world is grim, grim, grim.  One-dimensional, simplistic, revolutionary,  grindingly grim. Worse, everything that happens in the play reinforces and proves the correctness of the bleakness. 

Still worse, Odet wrote this polemic in the 30's only to renounce his politics and name names during the 1950's Communist witch hunts.  So, not only are we listening to dated "The Decay of Capitalism" crap, it's crap which the author himself later disowned.  It would have been a kindness to kill this play at the when the revolutionary spirit of the playwright died.

Yeah, I will also admit that part of my unhappiness with Paradise is that some part of me wants a happy -- or at least hopeful -- ending.  Spolier alert!  You won't even get a possibility of an uplifting breeze at the end of this puppy.

So, what's to like in this Paradise?  The set, the clothes, and most of the acting. 
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Define Paradise Lost: a play selection failure.  A disappointing use of design, direction, and acting talent.

Ozdachs Rating:

The quest of our aging, would-be knight hero failed to pass a friend's "So what?" test, but even she enjoyed reasonably much the journey to nowhere.  Her reaction sums up the night.

This bright, broad evening was simply fun.  Colorful, meandering, adventure-filled.  Good-spirited, obvious, raucous. Fun.

The social context of knights, by-gone chivalry, and 1600's Spain are not part of my background.  This Don Quixote didn't bring Cervantes' story into the 21st Century.  The evening didn't make universal any of the incidents in the narrative.  If anything, modern clichés like "Titling at Windmills" and the word "quixotic" gave theater-goers insight into what they were seeing instead of vice versa. So, for me, there was not much to the play-going experience.

The plot follows Quixote from one misunderstood misstep to the next.  It was a montage of cute, fun, tragic, fun.

This adaption work had no bite, meaning, or value beyond well-done entertainment.  It's enough for a happy evening, but not enough to spend much time thinking about.
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The show is enjoyable, but not life changing. Not even evening changing. Here's to well done fluff!

Ozdachs Rating:

A better title of this production of the seldom-produced Henry VIII would be The Vilma and Tony Show.  The performances of Vilma Silva (Queen Katherine) and Anthony Heald (Cardinal Wolsey) alone are enough to make this an extremely satisfying evening of theater.

This play is looked down on as odd -- if not downright "bad".  The Oregon Shakespeare Festival avoids it, having last put in on 25 years ago in 1984. The audience was littered with people who are seeing Henry VIII to complete their viewing of the Shakespeare canon.

And, the plot truly is not satisfying.  There's little sense of character development (despite the stated change in attitude of Wolsey).  The story of Henry's reign is abandoned way before his death.  And, the resolutions that do come in this putative "history" are deus ex machina spoken completions to the storyline.  These text-based miracles are common in Shakespeare's light-hearted comedies, but they are unwelcomed by the audiences attending more serious fare.

Enough bitching, already!

Shakespeare may have stinted on linear plot development, but he spent extra energy in crafting elegant pageant scenes and providing eloquent monologues for the protagonists. 

Vilma Silva as the pure, but soon-to-be-divorced, first wife of Henry, owns the stage.  Her costumes are exquisite: rich and regal and right. Her emotions, anger, word choice, and expressions absorbed the attention of every person in the theater. During her speeches of outrage and defiance, the outdoor venue was completely still except for Silva's voice and movement. When she left the stage after refusing to participate in a sham trial of her marriage, the audience applauded like partisans at a rally.

Her antagonist, Anthony Heald's Cardinal Wolsey, is straight-up, low-key, mundane evilness.  Complete, believable, rationalizing, conniving, logical Evil.  An Evil so smooth and polished that its self-centered meanness is completely recognizable 400 years after the scenes were written.  Heald's Wolsey would be comfortable in front of a bank of microphones at a 2009 press conference.  He is unflappable and has no hesitation as he reweaves facts into a storyline that furthers his goals.  I thought of Dick Chaney puppeteering the Bush White House, but you can draw your own parallels from your own political perspective.

The scenes that Silva and Heald gave the audience by themselves justified the evening out. Powerful, intense, real, and nuanced. "Wow"-producing.
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The performances of Silva and Heald made this evening of low expectations a happy night.  They delivered one master-class vignette after another until too soon Henry VIII was done.

Ozdachs Rating:

There's much (too much) to like about Equivocation.  I hope the playwright learns from this perfect production of his flawed script how to do the re-write that will make the play coherent and truly a unified work of art.

Ozdachs Rating: 

Ashland, Oregon
opening performance at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival

Dead Man's Cell Phone by Sarah Ruhl

A fun, snappy script built around a clever premise makes this theater adventure a satisfying romp. 

The play is pure entertainment as far as I can figure out. Its send-up of our need for constant communication makes me worry that I am missing Something Deeper.  But, if I've missed it, I am happy anyway.

The play notes tell us about a "... film-noir odyssey that crisscrosses life and death, isolation and connection, what’s real and what’s not."  Yeah, well, sure.  It was mostly fun, though.( Read more... )

This production amuses and made me laugh.  I didn't feel that the world changed, that characters really changed, or that I learned anything.  But, I had a good time.

Ozdachs Rating:   

Ashland, Oregon
opening night at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival

Macbeth by William Shakespeare

We were so looking forward to seeing the Oregon Shakespeare Festival redeem themselves after their 2002 butchery where they "adapted" Macbeth to make Lady Macbeth warm and cuddly and misunderstood. We went home thoroughly disappointed.

Last night's production left Shakespeare's words intact but unsexed it emotionally and deposited its storyline in disconnected speeches all across the stage.  This Macbeth is a bombastic mess badly conceived and faithfully driven into the ground by the talented acting staff.( Read more... )

The best thing about this Macbeth is that it is unadulterated Shakespeare.  The worst thing is that it is mostly un-acted Shakespeare.

Ozdachs Rating:   

Ashland, Oregon
at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival

Othello by William Shakespeare

Words, words, words!  Othello (Peter Macon, pictured left) and Iago (Dan Donohue, pictured right) made me feel like they each had too many of those damn multisyllabic chores to get through before they were allowed to go offstage and do something else.

There was one wordy speech after another.   You know the kind: they're loaded with big rhyming Shakespeare words.  Good-for-you and opaque.

Othello starts off on full-tilt loud ranting pitch which Macon maintains for nearly every scene and utterance.  Donohue is quieter, more controlled, and clearer. But, he is also always talking through a mouth full of dusty Elizabethan words. Additionally, Donohue's voice quavers annoyingly when he's trying to communicate intensity.  Dan, retire the vibrato!

At two hours fifty minutes Othello was more of an endurance trial for both actors and audience.  They spoke, we listened and tried to give meaning to the syllables.  The powerful story of jealousy, betrayal, and tragic love appeared repeatedly, but only briefly. 
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So when the actors, the set designer, the costume designer, and the music guy all go off and do their own disjointed thing, what do we fault?  Another disappointing job by another director who had not previously worked in Ashland.  Artistic Director Bill Rauch simply needs to work more closely with the younger talents he selects or else hire directors who are already skilled in regional repertory theater. 

Ozdachs Rating:   

Ashland, Oregon
at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival

The Comedy of Errors by William Shakespeare
Adapted and Directed by Penny Metropulos
Music  by Sterling Tinsley
Lyrics by Penny Metropulos and Sterling Tinsley. Additional lyrics by Linda Alper.

Oregon Shakespeare Festival has a affinity for breakthrough productions of Comedy.  In 2004 Bill Rauch set the play in Las Vegas with one set of twins sporting New Jersey accents and the other sounding Texan. Strip cocktail waitresses swirled through the audience at intermission.  This year, OSF upped the creative ante and not only moved the set to the mythical wild west, they also adapted the play and made it a musical.

It works.

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Metropulos and crew brought to life a surprisingly consistent, coherent new take on Comedy. Something I never saw before.  Something I didn't expect.  A production to cheer.

Ozdachs Rating:   

Ashland, Oregon
at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival

Our Town by Thornton Wilder

When you decide to present a well-known, quality chestnut, you're declaring that you either have a fresh vision or else you're going to new heights in production standards.  Hurtling above raised expectations is the stock in trade of the Oregon Shakespeare Festival with its schedule of Shakespeare and other plays that everyone has seen from high school on.  OSF also shares new perspectives on tired war horses many times a season.

Unfortunately, this edition of Our Town is neither innovative nor Tony Award material.  It's a technically competent production without gaffs. 

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I am only perplexed about whether to blame the casting or the directing for creating this just-competent production.  I think I'll pick direction, because given the talent shown in other plays by many of the cast, director Yew must intentionally created an evening of blasé high school theater.

Ozdachs Rating:   

Ashland, Oregon
at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival

A View from the Bridge by Arthur Miller

Most plays in theaters today are snappy, fast-faced reactions to the enveloping, careful productions of the mid-1900's.  They're not stodgy, not slow. We recognize what they are telling us through shared shortcut symbolism.  I appreciate their directness and focus on their themes.They reflect our times

But, seeing them had made me forget the rich language, dialog, characterization, and the details of everyday life in Arthur Miller at his best.  And, this production of A View from the Bridge is two and a half hours of classic slice-of-life mid-Century tragedy.  It's a standout treat with story, meaning behind the story, and sympathetic flawed people behind the meaning of the story.  

Five minutes into the play I had the first "Oh, my!" moment as I listened to the chatter on stage.  It'd been a long while since I last heard the scene set so completely and yet naturally with words.  The "Oh, my!"s continued throughout the show, as characters talked and did what you knew that had to.  There were no surprises, yet no moments where the tension eased or my attention wandered.

Under the flawless direction of Libby Abbel, the actors provided the best work I've seen each of them in. 

( Read the detailed review )
Of course, the political and social themes appeal to my taste in theater.  A good story with social content = great play.  OSF's production of A View from the Bridge makes the most of this classic work and delivers a few hours of great theater.

Ozdachs Rating:   

Ashland, Oregon
at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival

Breakfast, Lunch and Dinner by Luis Alfaro

A discussion of this performance needs be brief.  The reviewer shouldn't put more effort into the recap than the play writer did into his creation.

This wandering, pointless story is told with juvenile simplicity, no character development, and plenty of sophomoric words coming out of the mouths of inconsistent characters.  Worse, director Tracy Young apparently didn't bother to read the play since her playbill synopsis referred to both themes and details which were not present in the offal delivered to the audience.  Her failure to latch on to any coherent narrative or personality is abject.

There is an attempt to explain the weak connectedness and inappropriate speeches as a result of Alfaro's magical realism. No. Thanks for the artsy-sounding red herring, but that's not it.  Breakfast, Lunch and Dinner is simply a horrid blob.  Maybe it was a great workshop, but it is not a play. Shame on Artistic Director Bill Rauch for selecting it.  Bill, sacrificing quality on the altar of novelty is a stupid strategy.

Two reasons not to walk out mid-act: 

1. G. Valmont Thomas found vignettes in the jumble of words given him to say.  His scenes were revelatory when either intentionally humorous or intentionally not.  Thomas' insights were isolated and not given a chance by the script to move the story, but they were fun to watch.
2. The avenue stage set by Robert Brill was fanciful, bright, and effectively magical.

Ashland, Oregon
at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival

The Further Adventures of Hedda Gabler by Jeff Whitty

Ibsen's play Hedda Gabler ends with the title character shooting herself.  This play starts off with the last page of Ibsen's dialog and cavorts forward from there. You don't need to have seen or know the original Hedda, you'll soon learn all you need to know about that classic.

Written by the 2004 Tony Award winner for Best Book of a Musical for Avenue Q, this Hedda fills the frothy farce slot in Oregon Shakespeare Festivals schedule.  You know: the accessible funny play that everyone likes and you take your grandmother and culture-hating red-neck cousin to.

So, as I watched, I worried.  It isn't that TFAOHG isn't funny.  It is. In fact it is hilarious and brilliant and quick.

But, it isn't pointless and accessible and safe.  I expected tomatoes and rotten eggs and boos from the parts of the audience not ready for more than froth in their annual farce.

You see, after shooting herself in Ibsen's story, our Hedda wakes up and tries to figure out what's going on.  In quick succession she meets Mammy and Medea before Tosca drops in on the household. It turns out that Hedda lives on the cul de sac of tragic women. She lives out her suicide over and over and over.  She and her closest friends are the immortal successes with their tragedies, but the stage gets littered with characters who don't last so long.

This time when Hedda wakes up, she decides she wants to change. She wants to be happy. And, our journey starts.

And, what a trip!  Hedda is played by Robin Goodrin Nordli, the same actress who had the title role in OSF's 2003 production of Ibsen's play. That casting reflects the in-the-know Easter eggs which are planted throughout the script. 

Ashland, Oregon
at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival

Coriolanus by William Shakespeare

It's depressing.  This centuries' old play about events a millennium earlier than that still speaks too accurately about the crowd/personality/political dynamics of the campaigns featured today on CNN and Fox.

There is no one-for-one tracking between Shakespeare's characters and McCain, Romney, and the rest.  But, at times, when the self-righteousness or their temporizing morality is front and center, being refined for us future generations, I heard John and Mitt.

The self-centered, self-serving fickleness of public opinion is there, too.  Is there nothing new or nothing that we have learned?

It is the superb production that makes this dusty old story so powerful. 

Danforth Comins as Caius Martius blazes with energy, anger, self-righteousness, and heroism.  Comins (pictured on the left on the balcony) has beefed up for this role, and he looks the physical hero.  Butch, brash, patriotic, and studly. His focused but uncontrollable rage owns the intimate stage.

And, the stage is set just so perfectly.  Housed in the small New Theater in a theater-in-the-round configuration, Coriolanus is quick, sharp, and dangerous.  Scenes change with appropriate war-like cracks and flashes.  Crash-bang. No waiting. It's war. It's busy times.

The sparseness, the placing of characters among the audience, the striped-down stylized fox holes, cellphones and PDAs, and modern drag are not conceits. They work.

Getting me to accept Shakespeare set in any period except the time of the story or the time of Shakespeare is a high hurdle which Coriolanus easily cleared. In fact, I am embarrassed to admit one of my favorite moments.  Amidst a lot of street hubbub about what is to happen next, one character fumbles and unobtrusively gazes into his cellphone. He looks up, and starts off, "The auguries say..."  The cellphone as a mystical source of information: wonderful!
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Like Ashland's production of King John, Ashland's production of Coriolanus left me wondering why it is so infrequently produced.

Like Wit, Distracted, and Sylvia, I left the theater unable to talk coherently for minutes. My mind was a jumble of images that needed release... or at least settling.

Like listening to CNN election coverage, Coriolanus left me shaking my head, depressed.

Ozdachs Rating:  

Ashland, Oregon
at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival

A Midsummer Night's Dream by William Shakespeare

Wow!  This Midsummer isn't so much a staging of a grandmother-approved Shakespeare classic as a performance of a barely Work Safe on-stage rave. The risque romp uses Shakespeare's text and then sings, dances, and acts the story into a frenzy.

The best part of director Mark Rucker's vision are the fairy servants of King Oberon and Queen Titania.  These fairies aren't sweet Disney helpers with an impish sense of humor.  They're glam-rock refugees from Rocky Horror on a berserker binge of havoc making.

Other productions have left me wondering why the cute fairies were tweaking the poor love-besotted humans.  They were always comforting -- if oddly behaving -- beings helping us to the happy ending of the play.

Well!  These danger boys barely held their darkest impulses in check.  Their entrances caused wide-spread shrieks of excitement from the many teenage and sub-teenage girls in the audience.  Puck (John Tufts) was sexually smoky. Titania's courtiers were thieves, brazenly queer, and yet irresistible to all.

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This Midsummer Night's Dream is not a classic.  It's not a lovely fantasy story first read in high school.  It's a perverted man's pipe dream, corrupting family values and condoning bad behavior.  There's no consequence for misdeeds, and the sexually unrestrained get rewarded.  The low are brought high.   Disgusting!

Ozdachs Rating:  

Ashland, Oregon
at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival
world premiere - opening performance, February 24, 2008

Welcome Home, Jenny Sutter by Julie Marie Myatt

I cannot image a more calculated tugging of the audience's heart-strings.  Welcome Home, Jenny Sutter is  Love Story written to honor Iraq War veterans.  I feel manipulated, dirty.

"I noticed that you didn't give the play a standing ovation, little boy.  Most everyone else did.  Don't you honor our service men and women?"

All the playwright left out was little puppy dogs and cute bunnies.

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If I would have stood to applaud, it would have been for the production and not the play. 

Yet, I predict this play will be a smash.  OSF is offering active duty military, veterans, and reservists two free tickets to the play. Patriotic families will bring their kids.  This American show has more donor sponsors/producers/hangers-on listed in the playbill than any of the other productions. After Ashland the show is going to run in Kennedy Center in Washington. I wouldn't be surprised if President Bush attended and shed a tear at the appropriate moments.

Everyone loves a veteran. Isn't it awful what these soldiers have gone through. 

Of course it is.  But, this play is a cringe-inducing exploitation, not an honoring.

Ozdachs Rating:

Ashland, Oregon
at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival
opening performance, February 23, 2008

The Clay Cart by Sudraka (Translated by J.A.B. van Buitenen)

I've never seen a live-action Disney cartoon pageant before.  It was wonderful!

A rich, gorgeous stage filled with 40-some actors hosted this 2000-year-old play. The cast moved the story and the audience with their words, gestures, dance, and singing.  A funny, poignant, and biting social comedy, the evening was completely enjoyable and satisfying.  Its challenges, heroes,  problems, and villains were no lifeless abstract ancient stylizations -- we still fight the same evil kings and their rapacious cronies.

It's impossible to describe The Clay Cart without nodding to Shakespeare.  Sudraka may have lived 1500 years before and a continent away, but these two both knew how to comment on their times, give moral guidance, and make it a lot of fun.

The Clay Cart's tells of the love between Charudatta (Christopher Jean, pictured at right) and Vasatasena (Miriam A. Laube, pictured at left).  He is an honorable, generous man who gave away so much that he's now poor. She is a still-rich whore (called most often, delicately, a "courtesan") with a heart of gold. She is aggressively pursued by the immoral Samsthanaka (Brent Hinkley), brother-in-law to the evil king.  Eventually the good boy gets the girl as his second wife... the first wife and son are on stage, too. All loose ends are tied up, and every good guy is rewarded and every bad guy is brought down.

Getting to the happy ending is just so entertaining!
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I confess that when I signed up to see this ancient play by "India's Shakespeare" I was worried.  The production had the disquieting patina of being "good for you".  I walked out of the theater stunned about how it was so much fun for me.

Ozdachs Rating: