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, [...]

Ashland, Oregon at the Oregon Shakespeare FestivalDon Quixote by Miguel Cervantes Saavedra Word Premiere adaption by Octavio Solis The quest of our aging, would-be knight hero failed to pass a friend’s “So what?” test, but even she enjoyed reasonably much the journey to nowhere.  Her reaction sums up the night. This bright, broad evening was simply fun.  Colorful, meandering, adventure-filled.  Good-spirited, obvious, raucous. Fun. The social context of knights, by-gone chivalry, and 1600’s Spain are not part of my background.  This Don Quixote didn’t bring Cervantes’ story into the 21st Century.  The evening didn’t make universal any of the incidents [...]

Ashland, Oregon at the Oregon Shakespeare FestivalHenry VIII by William Shakespeare A better title of this production of the seldom-produced Henry VIII would be The Vilma and Tony Show.  The performances of Vilma Silva (Queen Katherine) and Anthony Heald (Cardinal Wolsey) alone are enough to make this an extremely satisfying evening of theater. This play is looked down on as odd — if not downright “bad”.  The Oregon Shakespeare Festival avoids it, having last put in on 25 years ago in 1984. The audience was littered with people who are seeing Henry VIII to complete their viewing of the Shakespeare [...]