Ashland, OR at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival Intimate Apparel by Lynn NottageI got teary-eyed watching Esther Mills and Mr. Marks appreciate the swath of fine fabric, Yes, their unrolling of a piece of cloth was that emotional, complex, and full. I didn’t feel manipulated.  There were no “Love means never having to say you’re sorry” sniffling heart-string tugs.  It was just that what wasn’t being said on stage — what couldn’t be said on stage — was just that potent. Intimate Apparel’s surface story is easy to tell. The play is about a mid-30’s single Negro seamstress of women’s undergarments [...]

Ashland, Oregon at the Oregon Shakespeare FestivalUP 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? […]

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.  […]

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 [...]

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. […]

Ashland, Oregon at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival The Tragical History of Doctor Faustus by Christopher Marlowe The only question being debated among the audience departing after Faustus is whether the evening is disappointing because of the insensitive direction of James Edmonson or whether the performance was doomed as soon as Artistic Director Libby Appel selected this 16th Century version of the classic make-a-bargain-with-the-devil fable.  No one argues that Faustus is a great – or even good – theatrical experience. Perhaps only because Faustus is still performed by many different companies, I come down on the blame-the-director side.  Moreover, even if it [...]