Ashland, Oregon opening night at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival Macbeth by William Shakespeare We were so looking forward to seeing the Oregon Shakespeare Festival redeem themselves after their 2002 butchery where they “adapted” Macbeth to make Lady Macbeth warm and cuddly and misunderstood. We went home thoroughly disappointed. Last night’s production left Shakespeare’s words intact but unsexed it emotionally and deposited its storyline in disconnected speeches all across the stage.  This Macbeth is a bombastic mess badly conceived and faithfully driven into the ground by the talented acting staff. […]

Ashland, Oregon opening performance at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival Dead Man’s Cell Phone by Sarah Ruhl A fun, snappy script built around a clever premise makes this theater adventure a satisfying romp.  The play is pure entertainment as far as I can figure out. Its send-up of our need for constant communication makes me worry that I am missing Something Deeper.  But, if I’ve missed it, I am happy anyway. The play notes tell us about a “… film-noir odyssey that crisscrosses life and death, isolation and connection, what’s real and what’s not.”  Yeah, well, sure.  It was mostly fun, though. [...]

Ashland, Oregon at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival The Comedy of Errors by William Shakespeare Adapted and Directed by Penny Metropulos Music  by Sterling Tinsley Lyrics by Penny Metropulos and Sterling Tinsley. Additional lyrics by Linda Alper. Oregon Shakespeare Festival has a affinity for breakthrough productions of Comedy.  In 2004 Bill Rauch set the play in Las Vegas with one set of twins sporting New Jersey accents and the other sounding Texan. Strip cocktail waitresses swirled through the audience at intermission.  This year, OSF upped the creative ante and not only moved the set to the mythical wild west, they also adapted the play [...]

Ashland, Oregon at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival Othello by William Shakespeare Words, words, words!  Othello (Peter Macon, pictured left) and Iago (Dan Donohue, pictured right) made me feel like they each had too many of those damn multisyllabic chores to get through before they were allowed to go offstage and do something else. There was one wordy speech after another.   You know the kind: they’re loaded with big rhyming Shakespeare words.  Good-for-you and opaque. Othello starts off on full-tilt loud ranting pitch which Macon maintains for nearly every scene and utterance.  Donohue is quieter, more controlled, and clearer. But, he is also always [...]

Ashland, Oregon at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival Our Town by Thornton Wilder When you decide to present a well-known, quality chestnut, you’re declaring that you either have a fresh vision or else you’re going to new heights in production standards.  Hurtling above raised expectations is the stock in trade of the Oregon Shakespeare Festival with its schedule of Shakespeare and other plays that everyone has seen from high school on.  OSF also shares new perspectives on tired war horses many times a season. Unfortunately, this edition of Our Town is neither innovative nor Tony Award material.  It’s a technically competent production [...]

Ashland, Oregon at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival Breakfast, Lunch and Dinner by Luis Alfaro A discussion of this performance needs be brief.  The reviewer shouldn't put more effort into the recap than the play writer did into his creation. This wandering, pointless story is told with juvenile simplicity, no character development, and plenty of sophomoric words coming out of the mouths of inconsistent characters.  Worse, director Tracy Young apparently didn't bother to read the play since her playbill synopsis referred to both themes and details which were not present in the offal delivered to the audience.  Her failure to latch on to any coherent narrative [...]

Ashland, Oregon at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival A View from the Bridge by Arthur Miller Most plays in theaters today are snappy, fast-faced reactions to the enveloping, careful productions of the mid-1900's.  They're not stodgy, not slow. We recognize what they are telling us through shared shortcut symbolism.  I appreciate their directness and focus on their themes.They reflect our times But, seeing them had made me forget the rich language, dialog, characterization, and the details of everyday life in Arthur Miller at his best.  And, this production of A View from the Bridge is two and a half hours of classic slice-of-life [...]

Ashland, Oregon at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival The Further Adventures of Hedda Gabler by Jeff Whitty Ibsen's play Hedda Gabler ends with the title character shooting herself.  This play starts off with the last page of Ibsen's dialog and cavorts forward from there. You don't need to have seen or know the original Hedda, you'll soon learn all you need to know about that classic. Written by the 2004 Tony Award winner for Best Book of a Musical for Avenue Q, this Hedda fills the frothy farce slot in Oregon Shakespeare Festivals schedule.  You know: the accessible funny play that everyone likes [...]

Ashland, Oregon at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival Coriolanus by William Shakespeare Coriolanus in 2008 It’s depressing.  This centuries’ old play about events a millennium earlier than that still speaks too accurately about the crowd/personality/political dynamics of the campaigns featured today on CNN and Fox. There is no one-for-one tracking between Shakespeare’s characters and McCain, Romney, and the rest.  But, at times, when the self-righteousness or their temporizing morality is front and center, being refined for us future generations, I heard John and Mitt. The self-centered, self-serving fickleness of public opinion is there, too.  Is there nothing new or nothing that we have [...]

Ashland, Oregon at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival A Midsummer Night’s Dream by William Shakespeare Wow!  This Midsummer isn’t so much a staging of a grandmother-approved Shakespeare classic as a performance of a barely Work Safe on-stage rave. The risque romp uses Shakespeare’s text and then sings, dances, and acts the story into a frenzy.The best part of director Mark Rucker’s vision are the fairy servants of King Oberon and Queen Titania.  These fairies aren’t sweet Disney helpers with an impish sense of humor.  They’re glam-rock refugees from Rocky Horror on a berserker binge of havoc making. Other productions have left me wondering [...]