Ashland, Oregon at the Oregon Shakespeare FestivalJulius Caesar by William Shakespeare All the best moments of this production of Julius Caesar come before Shakespeare's words are heard on stage: The banners in front of the New Theater venue and in its lobbies memorialize assassinated leaders from Xerxes in ancient Persia through Indira Gandhi in modern India. Stark and powerful, these black and white statements promise an accessible, strong, and contemporary evening. Before going dark, Vilma Silva (Caesar -- no problems for me with this gender twist) introduces herself and asks that the audience participate in the play by cheering for [...]

Ashland, Oregon at the Oregon Shakespeare FestivalMeasure for Measure by William Shakespeare Shakespeare never tired having his lead characters dress up in disguises and hinging plot lines on the fallout of mistaken identity or secret observations.  I, on the other hand, am weary of boys dressed as girls dressed as boys and kings posing as commoners acting kingly.  Too silly.  It doesn't help my enjoyment that most of these stories are comedies with deus ex machina happy endings. Measure for Measure may be officially a "problem play" and not a comedy, but there are enough absurd happy touches for me to decide [...]

Ashland, Oregon at the Oregon Shakespeare FestivalCat on a Hot Tin Roof written by Tennessee Williams Oregon Shakespeare Festival at its best strips Classic Plays of their Greatness, and allows the actors on stage to tell a simple story unburdened by the responsibility to live up to the Reputation of the Work of Art.  Their 2010 production of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof  — which closes too early on July 4 — is an example of OSF at the top of its craft. Director Christopher Moore has blended the original 1955 script with some of the 1974 revisions penned by [...]

Ashland, Oregon at the Oregon Shakespeare FestivalRuined written by Lynn Nottage This horror story opens with the audience being dropped into the middle of the ongoing uncivil war in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.  Mama Nadi (Kimberly Scott) is the wheeling, dealing savior madame and bar owner who, in the opening scene, is convinced by a trader to take on two new girls.  There are 10 girls who work for Mama (only three appear as characters). All have been victims of political gang rape by soldiers who know that their physical victims will then be cast out of their families [...]

Ashland, Oregon at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival Pride and Prejudice written by Jane Austin adapted by Joseph Hanreddy and J.R. Sullivan I saw Pride and Prejudice at its opening several months ago, and I have been struggling to write about it ever since. It's not that the production was so good or so bad that words fail me, it's that examining this sure-fire crowd pleaser is as pointless as the movie critics panning Sex in the City 2.  Basically, any review of either production isn't going to matter to anyone.  Fans of the genre are going to go and applaud, regardless of the [...]

Ashland, Oregon at the Oregon Shakespeare FestivalWell written by Lisa Kron It’s 105 minutes of “Did You Get It?”-sledgehammer-over-the-audience’s-head time as Well crawls its way to an unsatisfying conclusion.   Stand-up comedian Lisa Kron wrote this sketch play that is repeatedly not about her relationship with her mother. Not about her mother who is lounging prominently on stage even as the audience takes its seats.  Not. Get it? To be fair to Kron, I’ve talked to people who liked the play when it was at San Francisco’s ACT, it won Tony Award nominations for its lead characters when it was on [...]

Ashland, Oregon at the Oregon Shakespeare FestivalHamlet written by William Shakespeare directed by Bill Rauch Dan Donohue’s Hamlet is so strong, so conversational, so underplayed, so accessible that every moment of the play belongs to him.  In some productions, Hamlet shows up on stage as a wandering soul with a mouth full of pretty words.  Not here.  This Hamlet is at the knowing center of all action and activity.  The plot, the motives, the night, the story, the tragedy are all clear and all his. This Hamlet is not a callow 20-something who wound up at school, but a deferred [...]

Ashland, Oregon at the Oregon Shakespeare FestivalMusic Man Book, music, and lyrics by Meredith Wilson Story by Meredith Wilson and Frank Lacey I keep saying that I don’t like musicals. When I walked out of The Music Man grinning, humming, and full of “do you remember when Harold Hill…” comments, I thought I was on an unnatural high.  I was sure that after a day or so, the holes in the melodic fabric would appear, and I would become a happy, jaded nay-sayer again:  “Well, there really is only one song in the whole show, you know.” I assumed that a [...]

Ashland, Oregon at the Oregon Shakespeare FestivalParadise Lost by Clifford Odets Oh, damn! Another performance ranking Production: Good, Play: Awful. I was happily anticipating this Depression Era play directed by the same Libby Appel who resurrected  A View from the Bridge and provided an important and satisfying show last year. That Arthur Miller “period piece” was heartbreakingly current.  Unhappily, this year’s model resonates with 2009 with shared bad economic times, but it clunks down the street alone with Odets’ polemics and immutable characters. The winning philosophical views of life in Paradise are those of an embittered communist-sounding furnace repairman, Mr. Pike played by Mark Murphey, [...]