Ashland, OregonUP by Bridget Carpenter
After Larry Walters had his 15 minutes of fame flying a balloon-lifted lawn chair from his LA-area home in 1982, he dropped from the cultural radar. After the talk shows and the one-trick motivational speeches were over, the man still had a life to live. But, he lived back down on the ground and he didn’t surface again in the public stratosphere. So, what happened?
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Real life is too full of happiness and fun for me to want to see most comedies and other frivolous stuff on stage. Anne Frank is a perfect topic for a theater production: the horror is tightly wound and is inescapable, and it looms from the opening moments.
The dread in Anne’s saga lends itself to melodrama, and the play version of the diary dips into the genre fulsomely. The grinding of events and the knowledge of the bad end coming control the two-hours-plus production.
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Ashland, Oregon
at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival
Gibraltar by Octavio Solis
The components of this OSF-commissioned play are outstanding. The stories have depth and subtilty. The acting performances in the intimate New Theater are world-class wonderful. The technical elements – set design, costumes, lighting – range from flawless to inspired.
I left the performance feeling that it was my fault that the play didn’t come together in my mind.
Ashland, Oregon
at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival
The Belle’s Stratagem by Hannah Cowley
This OSF season is sorely testing my claim to like only death, destruction, and tragedy on the stage. First The Philander and now The Belle’s Stratagem have forced me to leave the theater grinning happily at the feel-good, happy-ending entertainment.
I can salvage my self respect only by mentioning that in both cases the plays were instructive of how old our “modern” ideas of women’s equality and liberal mores are. Belle’s Stratagem was written in 1780 and is centered on two plots: in the title story a woman figures out how to capture the heart of a man and the second plot line other concerns a country woman confronting the confusing and artificial ways of proper society. In both of these intertwined adventures the woman and men are knowing and aware of human foibles.
OSF claims that their Belle’s Stratagem is its first major production in 100 years. While Benjamin Franklin may have enjoyed this woman-written play, by the late 1800’s society had regressed. The propriety of women writing for the theater was questioned, and Hanna Cowley’s work was put on the shelf. OSF’s resurrection is a good deed.
Ashland, Oregon
at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival
Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom by August Wilson
Much of the impact of this play draws from the emotional baggage carried around by Kevin Kenerly’s character Levee. His hard-working family’s destruction by violent bigots when Levee was only eight brings menacing emotion into this blues recording session in 1927’s Chicago, 25 years later.