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“Macbeth” at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival
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“Macbeth” at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival

osf, plays

“Macbeth” at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival

Macbeth

by William Shakespeare
Directed by Evren Odcikin 

Ashland, OR at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival

In decades of play going I had never seen even a “good” Macbeth. In great theaters with famous stars playing key roles we still have always gone away marveling at the words but disappointed in the story and characters.

We had come to believe that there was so much chaos, blood, and incoherent scheming written into the play that the best that you could expect from seeing Macbeth was a series of memorable soliloquies and audition moments.

SMACK! My head (and emotions) are still spinning from the two times (so far) that I have seen OSF’s Macbeth. This production has characters, nuance, coherence, and still the amazing language and events. It is not a good Macbeth, it is a spectacular Macbeth. It is a spectacular show.

Under the direction of Evren Odcikin, Macbeth (Kevin Kenerly) and Lady Macbeth (Erica Sullivan) clearly love each other and are trying to help one another achieve their dreams. They are not just yelling threats and evil plans, but are actually thoughtful, hesitant, and, well, human.

Erica Sullivan as Lady Macbeth. Photo by Jenny Graham

Kevin Kenerly as Macbeth. Photo by Jenny Graham

Kenerly and Sullivan are perfect. You can watch and feel them think, worry, make bad decisions, worry, and try to achieve their dreams. Too often Lady Macbeth and Macbeth are shown to be absolute, unmitigated evil, plotting without hesitation. Not this OSF couple.

They hug and support each other as they contemplate actions they know are fraught but which will help them achieve goals they both want.

The Macbeths are so good, it is tempting to comment endlessly about them. But, there are so many other excellent touches and characters and moments.

The play focuses on people and their interactions. The performance begins with most of the company presenting ready for battle in a well choreographed and well snarled opening. The beginning introduces the theme felt throughout the play. What the Macbeths and others do affect the whole community/country.

Sure, there are some quiet scenes like the impactful mad scenes of Lady Macbeth. But at other times characters on center stage are flanked quietly by watchers so that you feel that the whole of Scotland is involved. I particularly liked the circle of witches that watched the later battle scenes. They watched the unfolding of what they prophesized which made it feel more powerful and mystic.

The three witches in Macbeth. Photo by Jenny Graham

Speaking of witches (Kate Hurstler, Amy Lizardo, Jennie Greenberry and Auston Henderson as Hecate) … wow! The costumes, movement, and rhythmic chanting are indeed magic. Not necessarily happy magic, but full of powerful import. Revelatory, sometimes eerily musical, and truly spooky, these witches and their scenes are completely integrated into the story we are experiencing. Sometimes I had to strain to understand what they were foretelling, especially when Hecate was broadcasting. But, I felt as a human it was appropriate for me to have to work to understand what I was hearing. (Still, clearer audio for Hecate would be appreciated.)

Damn, I feel compelled to return to how this Macbeth is different from all others. Yes, there are many speeches about blood and plotting deaths and more blood. But, in this OSF show the characters say the famous lines with pauses and reflection. They aren’t just words from “The Best of Shakespeare” or other dry source. These reflect feelings of the characters that they are compelled to share.

Macduff and Lady Macduff. Photo by Jenny Graham.

Never, never, never have I had any real emotion at a Macbeth. So, I found myself almost annoyed as I teared up listening to the heartbreak of Macduff (Jaysen Wright) as he talked about the murder of his wife (Gabriela Fernandez-Coffey) and children. I know the speech about the horrible murders we witnessed in a previous scene. It’s powerful and reinforces how evil Macbeth is. But, Wright’s phrasing, spacing, and physical look just reached out and got me. I felt like I should have known better, but this performance was too good to keep out of my heart. Intense humanness kept enriching scenes throughout the afternoon.

David Kelly as Duncan. Photo by Jenny Graham

Looking over the cast I feel like I have to give a shout out to everyone. How can I not mention the straight-forward goodness of old King Duncan (David Kelly) and how Kelly pulled off being the Porter (and Siward) with great fun and without any feel of his previous role hanging on?

Admirable Banquo (Armando McClain) was a careful and believable cohort of Macbeth. He was played as a fully present and loyal man, a perfect person to show the audience how Macbeth had gone bad and to torment Macbeth as a ghost. (Two nits to pick: I am not sure about the horns/branches/whatever on the ghost’s head at the banquet. I am sure they were well thought out, but I need education. Secondly, McClain also played the doctor in Lady Macbeth’s mad scenes. He was too important as Banquo not to be recognizable as the doctor. A different actor should have been used.)

Malcom (Dane Troy) was weak in the opening but commanded the stage as the new king the second performance I saw. Meanwhile, in both performances Nicole Villavicencio Gonzalez was terrific as the endangered children of Banquo and McDuff and Lady McDuff (Gabriela Fernandez-Coffey) was excellent as a overcome, doomed, worried parent.

Overall this performance is unreasonably, unexpectedly great. The direction and acting gave characters character and the storyline a true story. This is another OSF show that makes me think I never need to see this play again because I have seen the best possible version. (Of course, I always hope that some other production will prove me wrong!)

Macbeth ensemble. Photo by Jenny Graham.

My intellectual and emotional judgement is that his Macbeth is a must-see, must-experience artistic event. I rate it

By Galen Workman|2024-04-24T13:45:32-07:00April 22, 2024|osf, plays|0 Comments

“Once on This Island” at OSF

Once on This Island

Book and lyrics by Lynn Ahrens Music by Stephen Flaherty Based Upon the Novel My Love, My Love by Rosa Guy Directed by Lili-Anne Brown

Ashland, OR at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival

Once on This Island (2022): Chuckie Benson, Camille Robinson, Michael Wordly, and Phyre Hawkins. Photo by Jenny Graham.

Chuckie Benson, Camille Robinson, Michael Wordly, and Phyre Hawkins.
Photo by Jenny Graham, OSF.

It was good to be back in the Bowmer Theater to for a fun evening that is full of energy, good singing, lively movement, and entertaining and meaningful music.

The story is a Caribbean-set retelling of Hans Christian Andersen’s The Little Mermaid, and virtually all plot development in Once is delivered in song. The different moods, the different sounds, and the characters all work delightfully.

J. D. Webster, Sasha Jewel Weymouth, and Patricia Jewel. Photo by Jenny Graham, OSF

All the cast members were above competent with careful expressive motions and voice. I am seriously impressed by the young actress who played Little Ti Moune (either Sasha Jewel Weymouth or Ayvah Johnson, I didn’t see in the playbill which we were seeing that night). The young actor was a dynamo, controlled, and on pitch.

We also enjoyed seeing a larger group of actors fill up the stage. What fun!

The direction and lighting were flawless. The story’s message of racism was obvious and the director’s notes that she was glad to have been able to produce the show from a Black perspective puzzled me. Do some productions make it okay that Ti Moune gets dumped by her prince because of her skin color? Ick.

Some technical areas kept me from pure happiness. The major flaw for me was the costumes. They were overdone and cheap looking straight out of a high school production. I don’t know the budget, but it apparently wasn’t enough.

The sound was also iffy at times. Sometimes the words in songs disappeared in the music. The worst of this was at the end when there’s singing telling the future of Ti Moune and succeeding generations. I missed the future of her as a tree completely.

And, I agree with a friend’s criticism that in a musical there should be some magic that shows up sometime on the set. Once‘s scenic design was unchanging despite the different locations of the scenes. This again was perhaps a budget issue, but the effect was to damp down the specialness of the evening.

Overall the show was a lot of fun with meaning and emotion. I give it:

By Galen Workman|2022-05-07T16:34:31-07:00May 7, 2022|osf, plays|0 Comments

“unseen” at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival

unseen

written by Mona Mansour
directed by Evren Odcikin

Ashland, OR
at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival

unseen has given us hours of discussion on how we could fix it to make it a good play. We try so hard because the storyline resonates so loudly in our times of war, horror, loss, and helplessness. And we can spend hours on fixes because there are so many issues.

The title unseen itself illustrates one of the play’s problems. The e. e. cummings capitalization style is obviously supposed to mean something. So much of unseen is supposed to mean something that I didn’t quite grasp. From the title capitalization to parts of the set to passages of dialog to almost everything presented to the audience, the show is endlessly metaphorically symbolic and reminiscent of… things I should understand.

But, there’s too much I don’t understand without taking the PhD class in symbolism.

Perhaps I would spend more time trying to grok the finer points presented to us, except that the main character, Mia (played by Helen Sadler), is unlikable. Her coldness is another point of endless debate — is the character written poorly or is the problem with the actor and director in this production. Whatever the reason, we don’t wind up caring about what has happened or is happening to her.

Because we don’t bond with Mia, the string of events in her life feel random. I know what she’s lived through is PTSD provoking. But, she wasn’t warm and friendly in the earlier, pre-passing-out stressed flashback moment. So did we miss some earlier damaging scene? And, speaking of time disorientation, scenes usually started out with their time being displayed in lights on a beam on the stage, e..g, “3 months ago”. But, I think that the scenes were shown in chronological order. Weren’t they? So why display the dates?

unseen (2022): Helen Sadler and Nora el Samahy. Photo by Jenny Graham.

Helen Sadler and Nora el Samahy. Photo by Jenny Graham, OSF

I am fan of the rule that if you show me a gun in Act I you need to shoot it before the play is over. In unseen I never understood why Mia is a lesbian. Was it because her ex girlfriend (Derya, played by Nora el Samahy) was not out and therefore was “unseen” by much of Derya’s birth family? I don’t know. And, there were just too many loose ends for me to care about any of them.

The highlights of the short 100-minute-ish performance was the acting by el Samahy and Carolyn Shaffer who played Jane, Marian, and Nancy. These two women gave nuanced, emotional, and approachable performances. They quality of their acting was one of the reasons there was so much discussion on fixing the play… we wanted it to be worthy of their skill.

However, there’s even more to fix.

The stage design was weird with 1/3 seemingly reserved for a tree branch. There was too much movement from one side to the other making people feel like there were watching a tennis match in the aisle configuration.

Then there were the words flashed on the set telling us the time period of some of the scenes. That was okay because if you missed the date in its out-of-the-way location you generally got was going on by context. However, at the end of the play there is a prayer/song/something sung in Turkish (Arabic?) and the English translation was apparently splashed on a wall. About one in six people I talked to saw the translation, the rest of us missed the meaning of the closing words. That was a loss.

unseen has too many themes, too many possibilities, and too many symbols to be either fun or worthwhile. It’s a well-meaning piece with two fine actors, and you will discuss your ideas about how to improve it. But, overall, it’s only:

Ozdachs Rating:

By Galen|2022-05-07T15:34:26-07:00May 7, 2022|osf, plays|0 Comments

“A Midsummer Night’s Dream” at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival

A Midsummer Night’s Dream

written by William Shakespeare
directed by Joseph Haj

Ashland, OR
at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival

A Midsummer Night’s Dream (2020): Jeremy Gallardo (Snug), K. T. Vogt (Robin Starveling), Cristofer Jean (Francis Flute), Ensemble. Photo by Jenny Graham, Oregon Shakespeare Festival. — **A Midsummer Night’s Dream (2020): Jeremy Gallardo (Snug), K. T. Vogt (Robin Starveling), Cristofer Jean (Francis Flute), Ensemble.**
Photo by Jenny Graham, Oregon Shakespeare Festival.

Oh dear! I really didn’t want my last comments on this COVID-19 affected season to be anything but positive. I had hoped that I would see more plays later in the year that I could sincerely applaud. Unfortunately the virus shut down all but two weeks of the season, and what I saw opening weekend is all that is written in the books for 2020.

A Midsummer Night’s Dream is the fourth of the performances I saw during the two-week season and it, unfortunately, was a forgettable bit of onstage busyness.

Midsummer at worst is a fun romp. At best, the audience is unexpectedly engaged by evil fairies or some special vision offered by the director. This Midsummer was a fun romp.

Keeping track of who was who and whom they lusted after was too much work. I enjoyed the emotions and acts scene by scene. It’s a Shakespeare comedy, for God’s sake. Just sit back and watch misdirected love, magic, and pomposity. You know that it will all turn out all right in the end.

A Midsummer Night’s Dream (2020): Ensemble (the Mechanicals). Photo by Jenny Graham, Oregon Shakespeare Festival. — **A Midsummer Night’s Dream (2020): Ensemble (the Mechanicals).**
Photo by Jenny Graham, Oregon Shakespeare Festival.

The set is simple, people wander through it as various characters, and I didn’t sense too much difference between the groups. The stage itself is bare and without energy. The costumes are overdone symbols of something. They didn’t feel like they were designed for this play.

The acting was excellent, no surprise. I thought Lauren Modica (Hippolyta and Titania) and Jonathan Luke Stevens (Lysander) stood out as lust objects worth fighting over (even if they weren’t for each other). In fact, most of the cast gave good scenes and deserve praise for their performances.

But, ultimately this Midsummer gives support to the jaded theater goers who haughtily say that, “I don’t need to see any of his comedies again.” It’s a well-acted fun romp but not a distinctive fun romp.

Ozdachs rating:

By Galen|2020-05-31T12:50:10-07:00May 31, 2020|osf, plays|0 Comments

“Copper Children”

written by Karen Zacarias
directed by Shariffa Ali

Ashland, OR
at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival

The Copper Children (2020): Ensemble. Photo by Jenny Graham, Oregon Shakespeare Festival. — **The Copper Children (2020): Ensemble.**
Photo by Jenny Graham, Oregon Shakespeare Festival.

Copper Children has much going for it: an under-told, important story, a talented playwright who entertained and educated us with Destiny of Desire, and an experienced and immensely talented cast. Unfortunately, this world premiere wasted its assets and delivers an evening that is a moralistic plod which fails to create drama or feelings.

The play tells the story is of white Catholic orphans from New York who get sent out west for adoption by good Catholic families, good Mexican Catholic families. The families are already treated badly by the Protestant Anglo corporation bosses and other city residents. When the kids show up for distribution to the Mexican families, the authorities step in and give the children to white families.

The plot focuses on one Mexican family who has had several miscarriages and infant deaths caused by the pollution of the copper mine where everyone works. The wife is desperate for a child, and she and her husband are salt-of-the-earth good people. They’re perfect candidates to adopt a child. The Catholic adoption workers place a child with family only to have the girl forcibly removed and given to a powerful white family.

Along the way we learn about the terrible life orphans in New York have. We understand that matching these children to new families out west is a good thing. We see the New York nuns send the kids west.

For this play, the orphans are represented by a puppet girl. The use of the puppet and simple, but expressive set, by Scenic Designer Mariana Sanchez are creative highlights of the show.

Unfortunately the puppet is given more character than the human actors on stage. Most are cardboard cutouts of good or evil. Charles Mills (Rex Young) as the mining company manager is a one-dimensional waste of acting talent. The Mexicans and the nuns are all over-the-top good — or at least good without engaging depth.

One character, Lottie Mills (Kate Hurster) as the manager of the company store and wife of the mining manager starts to be written as a good Anglo. In an early scene she seems to be trying to give Margarita Chacon (Caro Zeller), our would-be mother, a break on something Margarita is buying the the store. Lottie hides the deal from her pure sociopath husband and treats Margarita as a fellow human. But, in later scenes Lottie inexplicably switches into being the leading racist, making sure that the white New York City orphans don’t get placed with Mexican families. We learn that Lottie has also had problems having a child and she winds up with our puppet girl, but the change in Lottie’s attitude really isn’t understandable.

Father Mandin (Eddie Lopez) is the one character who develops any depth.

Although not a major player, Lopez’s priest slows down the pace and deals with the people on stage as if they had complexity.

He himself seems to ponder, have concerns, and may even have internal conflict.

The Copper Children (2020): Caro Zeller (Margarita Chacón), Eddie Lopez (Father Mandin), Gabriela Fernandez-Coffey (Gloria). Photo by Jenny Graham, Oregon Shakespeare Festival. — **The Copper Children (2020): Caro Zeller (Margarita Chacón), Eddie Lopez (Father Mandin), Gabriela Fernandez-Coffey (Gloria).**
Photo by Jenny Graham, Oregon Shakespeare Festival.

Maybe that’s it. Aside from Father Mandin, The Copper Children is populated by walking/talking symbols and not people. The one-dimensional all good/all evil roles fit the Telenovela melodramatic format of Destiny of Desire. As a pointed comedy, Destiny made its statements with silly characters. We laughed while we also absorbed the social truths sprinkled in the script.

But, Copper Children is advertised as a drama. There is no wink-and-nudge smirk at the stereotypes shown on stage that entertained in Destiny. Instead, we are bludgeoned with one-dimensional moralism delivered via incompletely written characters. The experience just isn’t fun, absorbing, or good theater.

The play educated me on on some evil bits of our American history. I learned about copper mining in the West and the corporate greed and white racism that devastated the Mexican workers and their families. Still, a few paragraphs in a history essay would have reached me more effectively.

The Copper Children should be so much better. Zacarias picked a moment with the action, people, and dilemma primed for exploration. But, as written on opening night, Copper Children piles on guilt without growth or involvement. My wild hope is that Zacarias will use the COVID-19 OSF shutdown to add dimension to the characters and either subtlety or humor to her moral imperatives.

Ozdachs rating:

By Galen|2020-04-05T11:23:50-07:00April 5, 2020|osf, plays|0 Comments