racism | Dangerous Common Sense

“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

Othello

Ashland, Oregon
at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival

Othello

by William Shakespeare
directed by Bill Rauch

I know I have seen Othello before, at least a couple of times. But, I never experienced this deliberate, painful story with believable Evil, blinded goodness, and flawed purity. Other Othellos were classic SHAKESPEARE. This was 2018 artistry. I left the theater wondering if Othello‘s tragedy is personal or is the real sadness that racism, dislike of foreigners, faux-Christian superiority and male dominance has changed so little in 400+ years?

Othello (Chris Butler) is certainly flawed and succumbs too completely to Iago’s (Danforth Comins) suggestions of marital infidelity. But, Butler’s Othello is not the bombastic, purely self-important character I’ve been presented with before. He’s trusting, reflective. There are pages of dialog from him and about him I swear were written for this performance. Yes, he makes terrible decisions, but they are recognizable human decisions.

I suspect the nasty racial slurs and the dwelling on Othello’s nationality have been swallowed in other productions to make the play more a great piece of literature focusing on irrational jealousy, suitable for educated audiences. Othello is about misplaced jealously, after all.

But, in Director Rauch’s Othello, the prejudiced-based plotting against the Other, exemplified by, but not solely practiced by, Iago deepens the significance of the production. This show is not the easy moral lesson about avoiding gossip and trusting your wife that other Othellos have been.

Chris Butler, Alejandra Escalante. Photo by Jenny Graham.

There are so many comments about race and nationality. How could I have missed their importance before? I mean, they were there, but it was all about misplaced jealously, wasn’t it?

Furthermore, Rauch and his cast have discovered that none of the characters are true stereotypes of good, mindless evil, and blind protectiveness. I don’t remember hearing the subtitles of personality in other productions, but Rauch’s actors emphasize nuance over comfortable classifications.

Iago shares his cunning schemes not as an irrational one-dimensional crazy person, but as a hurt, vindictive, effective narrow human. Comins gives us a man, not just an archetype, to despise.

Amy Kim Waschke (Emilia) Danforth Comins (Iago). Photo by Jenny Graham.

Audiences for all Othellos must lament Desdemona’s panicked concealment of the symbolic handkerchief’s innocent loss. Yet, I’ve never felt before how reasonable Othello was in his doubts about Desdemona’s purity as I did watching OSF’s scene of repeated questions and dissembling. My God! Othello was not the insanely jealous icon of self-delusion and self-righteousness who I remember.

I’m sure the dismissive xenophobia of the local population, especially the Muslims, has been there before. But, I just haven’t seen it. At least not in a way that made it part of the central weaving of prejudice and unfairness that poisoned Othello’s mission, marriage, and mind.

I especially appreciated a small silent scene, possibly added by Rauch, where the local Muslim official (Barzin Akhavan) unrolls a prayer mat downstage and bows his religious obligations. The dialogue and force of action is about preparation for a public dinner by our Christian characters, but we get to see this quiet act of differentness. Brilliant.

This is no pageant grandly presented in the Elizabethan theater. The simple, but exquisite, set by Christopher Acebo allows Iago to come out and literally touch audience members, to draw us in to his need for to recover from the ego injury of having been passed over for promotion by the dark-skinned Othello. I felt his need to bring down the foreigner and to make Venice great again.

Othello is placed in modern times, almost flawlessly. The location unleashes Acebo. His clean stages always allow the audience to see the action on stage better, and in Othello he has devised ways to make us feel very comfortable and included in the story.

My favorite setting was that of the work-out gym that is used for the serial plotting of the women and the men. You know those series of conversations where people keep meeting each other on the street, saying their lines that move the story, and then disappearing in a rapid succession of “Adieus”? To avoid the street mish-marsh, Acebo created a gym, complete with a wall of big-screen TV’s, where Othello et al naturally came in, worked out, talked, and then moved on to the showers. That’s how people would meet and gossip in 2018!

Chris Butler, Derek Garza, James Ryen, Barzin Akhavan. Photo by Jenny Graham.

The entire cast was excellent. I am particularly fond of people who make small roles memorable without drawing too much attention to their minor part, and so kudos to Richard Elmore for his whistling handyman. (He’s the Duke, too, but much more fun with his box of tools.) I feel the need to applaud Desdemona (Alejandra Escalante), Cassio (Derek Garza), Roderigo (Stephen Michael Spencer), Emilia (Amy Kim Waschke). and Lodovico (James Ryen) — great jobs!

There are two areas which left me flat. First, Othello has an accent that is difficult to understand. Butler delivers it consistently, and I get that it makes him more foreign. But, the accent sounds more like central or south African to me, although I am no expert. In any event, even if it is genuine Moroccan, its distracting. A minor nit.

The other nit is some of the costume designs by Dede M. Ayite. For an elegant dinner Desdemona’s dress is a green thing that looked like it came from someone going to my high school prom in 1967. My theater date complained about Desdemona’s orange pants in another scene. Meanwhile Roderigo is given prominent bulging, pointed crotches for no apparent reason. Maybe he has a problem fitting into the wardrobe, but whatever the cause, the effect is distracting. Nothing is ever made of his endowment so I felt like they showed us a gun in Act I but never fired it. Either the costumes — or Roderigo — need some surgery.

Nits aside, Bill Rauch’s Othello is a masterful performance that exemplifies the uniqueness of the talent and vision of the artists at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival. He and his team avoid the simple, single-themed popular approach to Shakespeare’s story. They restore the many detailed narratives and human depths so that Othello is a modern horror.

Play rating:

By Galen|2018-03-03T19:01:35-08:00February 25, 2018|osf, plays|0 Comments

Hannah and the Dread Gazebo

Ashland, Oregon
at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival

Hannah and the Dread Gazebo :: Photo OSF

Hannah and the Dread Gazebo
by Jiehae Park
WORLD PREMIERE

At least half of the audience has a wonderful time seeing a fun show with amusing characters. But, make no mistake about what’s amusing: Asian stereotypes speaking pigeon English while committing cultural faux pas that annoy the very “American” 20-something children of the butt of the jokes.

2017 audiences would not put up with a performance whose entertainment value hinged on older African Americans portrayed as lazy Stepin Fetchit’s. That racism would not be considered amusing.

But, apparently it’s still okay to anchor an evening’s laughs on over-emotional, bicycle riding, odd-speaking Asians. It’s especially okay when the play is written by person of Korean heritage.

You can examine stereotypes, make them amusing, and still treat the characters with respect. Last year’s Vietgone! played off the cultural divide of immigrant Asian generations. Vietgone! worked to tell the story of the now-older, immigrant generation, integrating the Old-World myths into a unified family history that that story’s playwright shared with audiences with love, respect, and… yes… humor. (I still remember fondly the Ninja motorcycle fight!)

But, in Hannah, there is no cultural reconciliation. Instead, it’s all about the title character. Quirky-acting Grandmother, Mother, and Dad exist only for Hannah’s self-absorbed attempt to connect to her family and cultural heritage. Over-the-top caricatures come and go as Hannah makes meaning of her family and centuries of Korean heritage… all in the two weeks she has allowed for this revelation, or, if you prefer, in the 90-minute running time of the play. She never seems to catch on to what Dad or anyone else is about unless the storyline also involves her. Korean stuff remains alien and laugh-inducing to the end.

Beyond the racism, the play is simply poorly constructed and written.

It’s another one of those plays so loaded with Symbolism and Meaning that you know you’re a boob for not appreciating the greatness of it all. I confess I struggled. I tried to add meaning to the thin, often-repeated, poorly detailed story of a bear and a tiger. That gem had so much importance, and so much of that importance remains lost on me.

Then there are the great moments of Magical Realism — or of something. One favorite is the dropping of a severed bloody foot into Mother’s hands when she is in a dream scene on a roof. Of course that foot drop gets a laugh because it’s such an absurd piece of physical comedy. But, I am also sure that the oversized bleeding prop had much deep meaning that I need to be educated on. Unfortunately, it was just one of so many MR moments that I really didn’t appreciate fully.

There is an entire semester, if not academic year, that explores the reason for the magpie, rock, and why the females in this particular family have a “wish”. Pretentious hogwash.

Sean Jones

I also need to complain about casting. There are many lines where Sean Jones (Dang, Hannah’s brother) talks about being disoriented in Seoul because everyone looks just like him, so Asian. Well, all the cast in Hannah does look Asian and has Asian surnames, except for Sean. The mismatch between the physical character and his lines is disconcerting. Sean is tall, dark, hairy, and doesn’t have discernibly Asian features (whatever they are). When he bemoans how everyone in Korea looks just like him, you want to see his DNA test to see where Ancestry.com says he really comes from. (In a panel discussion, he explained that he is half Japanese.)

Of course, Sean does an admirable job acting in the role. It’s not his fault that his looks don’t match the script. And, all the other actors are just fine, too. My unhappiness has nothing to do with the onstage talent or the technical aspects of the show.

Finally, let me assure you that although I get only a “C” on the symbolism test, I have an inkling that the play is about Hannah coming to understand her heritage, getting her mother through a depression, and about the family in general. But, Hannah doesn’t do a great job of growing. And, Hannah’s quest has nothing to do why the audience is having a good time. Her search is a cover to allow the racist core to masquerade as art.

Simply, the audience enjoys the performance because of the witty, snarky anti-Asian cartoons that are the foundation of this 90-minute travesty.

I am disappointed, and say Hannah rates .

By Galen|2017-04-23T12:54:51-07:00April 23, 2017|osf, plays|0 Comments