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 [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

Ashland, Oregon at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival Coriolanus by William Shakespeare Coriolanus in 2008 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 [...]

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 [...]

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. […]

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 [...]

Ashland, Oregon at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival opening performance, February 23, 2008 Fences by August Wilson The opening of Fences revealed a shaky story shakily told. I assume that it’s the script which has inconsistencies and false starts that Oregon Shakespeare merely brought forward.  Certainly this production didn’t weave together a clear or consistent or entertaining storyline from whatever August Wilson wrote. To begin, various cast members stumbled over lines at least a half dozen times.  Blowing lines in an obvious way is my personal pet peeve;  it always jars me out of the moment. And, these Fences characters had [...]

Ashland, OR at the Oregon Shakespeare FestivalRomeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare Director and future Artistic Director Bill Rauch found ways to make this classic fresh and standout from the pack of “another Romeo and Juliet”.  Rauch’s creativity augers well for his upcoming run as the festival’s Visionary In Chief. This is a fast-paced R&J, and it is viewed with a generation gap at the center of the drama.  The parents’ generation is decked out in old fogy Elizabethan grab while the young adults and town folk are with-it, modern, dressed as prep school students and in current-day suits. The parents are stuck [...]