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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.
( Read more... )
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: 
Tags: plays
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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: 
Tags: plays
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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: - 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.
- The avenue stage set by Robert Brill was fanciful, bright, and effectively magical.
That's it. We didn't walk out, but I recommend exercising your membership benefits and turning in the tickets you hold for this inexcusable waste of time. Ozdachs Rating:  Tags: plays
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 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. Hedda leaves home to talk her author into rewriting her as a happy person. Hedda's husband Tesman (played by the always-jumping-on-a-sofa Chris DuVal) and Mammy (Kimberly Scott) follow. Along the way, the followers encounter a slew of fictional characters, some transient and some immortal like Hedda. Patrick (Anthony Heald) and Steven (Jonathan Haugen) from The Boys in the Band join in as traveling companions. They bond quickly with Mammy because each of the three have been cast out by their own people. They're viewed as sell outs or self-loathing anachronisms by today's audiences. But, it's all good farce, remember? Certainly the quick bitch fights have happy zingers. And, who cannot like a cocktail party in a row boat when Mammy, Patrick, and Steven commiserate about their fate? My worries about flying tomatoes became a panic as the travelers meet one fictional character after another and then bump into Jesus Christ. Actually 4 Jesuses: Jesus the Carpenter's Son, Mel Gibson Jesus on the Cross, Baby Jesus, and Godspell Jesus. Carpenter's Son explains that Mel Gibson Jesus and Baby Jesus are the most popular models because people like to focus on the birth and death and no so much about what he said. Or, something like that. It was all very quick, and it was hard to hear while I was under my seat, ducking to avoid what I was sure to be a very rotten tomato barrage. Oddly, the audience kept laughing. Howling sometimes. Do all those older traditional grandmothers really understand the gay-infused allusions? Can they still like a play with those two explicatives bitch-screamed across the stage? (The photograph, by the way, shows Patrick and Steven in an unhappy moment... like the unhappy moment that ended all their parties.) The staging (Christopher Acebo), flawless costumes (designed by Shigeru Yaji), and direction (Bill Rauch) complemented the spot-on acting ensemble. The many fictional characters were played by Kate Mulligan (Meda), Gregory Linington (Carpenter Jesus and others), and the other actors already complimented. It was a great, fast-moving zoo of personalities and witticisms. We left the theater a bit dismissive. We were grinning about seeing something witty and fun, but we thought it was just fluff. But two days later I was still telling people about the play and how well the narrative exposed the importance of storytelling. At breakfast we discussed how we would have to update the characters for the audiences in 2058. Finally we had to admit, TFAOHG got us thinking in addition to laughing. Ozdachs Rating:  Tags: plays
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 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!
( Read more... )
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: Tags: plays
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 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.
( Read more... )
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: Tags: plays
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 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!
( Read more... )
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: Tags: plays
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