Ashland, Oregon at the Oregon Shakespeare FestivalThe Very Merry Wives of Windsor, Iowa Written by Alison Carey Adapted from the play by William Shakespeare I cannot recall walking out at intermission at Oregon Shakespeare Festival before, but unless I was going to start hissing from the front row, I had to leave last night. This sledge-hammer piece of political correctness is so crass and blatant that I felt creepily unclean as a beneficiary of its message of equality. On a grand scale, VMWWI is a modern adaptation of the jealousy and intrigue depicted in Shakespeare's The Merry Wives of Windsor.  In [...]

Ashland, Oregon Opening Performance, February 26, 2012 at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival Seagull Written by Anton Chekhov Adapted and Directed by Libby Appel A three-word summary review of Seagull:  unfortunate play selection. Everything about this production was well done.  The actors hit the right note in everything they did.  Chris Acebo’s set took inventive advantage of the New Theater’s intimacy.  Deb Dryden’s clothes were rich and a nice counterpart to the early sparseness of the stage.  Libby Apple directed a consistent, restrained, and intelligent vision of this Chekhov classic.  Even with all the top-notch craft work, the scenes dragged and [...]

Ashland, Oregon World Premiere Opening Performance, February 25, 2012 at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival The White Snake Written and Directed by Mary ZimmermanPlaywright Mary Zimmerman has distilled an ancient, often modified, Chinese legend of The White Snake into a coherent, relevant, engrossing, artistic, and accessible 138-minute story. The text is stylized and full of Eastern cultural references, but Zimmerman’s lively, humorous, and rich approach somehow [“somehow” as in “the magic happens here”] honors the fable’s roots while letting it transcend its place and time of origin.  The White Snake avoids being artsy fartsy as Zimmerman’s works have been in the [...]

Ashland, Oregon Opening Night at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare In Director Laird Williamson vision, Romeo and Juliet is a farcical melodramatic moral play filled with bawdy clowns.  It’s a slapstick tragedy, a category  underrepresented on modern stage.  The script’s only fault is the pesky obvious rhymes and flowery language that can be best gotten through in a quick pace at high volume.  Williamson has ordered up so many pelvic thrusts for the hormonal young men that the show is unsuitable for school tours.  What in other productions comes off as witty sexual innuendo, Williamson [...]