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, [...]

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 [...]

Ashland, Oregon at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival Death and the King’s Horseman by Wole Soyinka The rhythms, the timing, and method of communication in Death and the King’s Horseman are not familiar or comfortable for a typical American play-goer. But, if you let yourself be absorbed into the opening long, chatty, riddling, market scene — if you let your thoughts fall into the same tempo as the indirect, elaborate, and elegant storytelling dialog — then Death will grab you from the opening curtain… err… more like opening colorful banner… and make you witness an unwanted, unavoidable, and unstoppable tragedy. This vignette of [...]

Ashland, Oregon at the Oregon Shakespeare FestivalEquivocation by Bill Cain This world premiere production is stuffed with clever concepts, interesting plots, brilliant acting, spectacular execution, and meaningful messages. It’s an artistic tour de force bursting with importance and complex stories which are determined to cross centuries of time to reflect the current events of 2009 (or, at least George Bush’s 2001-2009 torture-burdened court). But, it is disappointment to have to sit through such an overwrought and under-edited excellent draft play.  I am puzzled why a typical amateur error of piling on content was allowed to progress to a full-blown production on [...]