Ashland, Oregon at the Oregon Shakespeare FestivalCat on a Hot Tin Roof written by Tennessee Williams Oregon Shakespeare Festival at its best strips Classic Plays of their Greatness, and allows the actors on stage to tell a simple story unburdened by the responsibility to live up to the Reputation of the Work of Art.  Their 2010 production of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof  — which closes too early on July 4 — is an example of OSF at the top of its craft. Director Christopher Moore has blended the original 1955 script with some of the 1974 revisions penned by [...]

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 [...]