Out West Arts: Performance at the end of the world

So how is Shakespeare faring these days up in Oregon? His name is still comfortably wedged in the middle of the moniker Oregon Shakespeare Festival, and the plays attributed to him still represent the lion’s share of the productions presented in Ashland each year. But if you think all the heat these days is generated from new commissions at the festival, you would be wrong. In fact, Festival Artistic Director Bill Rauch has been pushing the envelope further and further since taking the helm in Oregon with free-wheeling and sometimes broadly re-interpretive stagings. Of course, these shows don’t always hatch directly from the mind of Mr. Rauch, and they certainly all haven’t been artistic successes. But if the offerings this season are any indication, Rauch has aggressively welcomed different thinking and the Shakespeare at this year’s festival is full of some fascinating surprises beyond putting actors in 20th-century garb and transposing the settings of the plays.

Perhaps the best example of this is Alison Carey’s adaptation of The Merry Wives of Windsor which under the direction of Christopher Liam Moore now carries the title The Very Merry Wives of Windsor, Iowa. The action of this Falstaffian comedy is moved up to modern day Iowa, and much of Shakespeare’s text has been tweaked and modernized to gibe with the setting. But the radical move here isn’t to change Falstaff to a losing U.S. presidential primary candidate or making his letters to Alice Ford and Margaret Page text messages. No, the stroke here is to take Shakespeare’s play about the importance of being with whom you really love and casting it almost entirely as a play about the contemporary issue of gay marriage in the U.S. The genders of characters are reassigned across the board with the Fords now becoming a lesbian couple and Falstaff wagering if he can bend the eye of the straight Margaret Page before the lesbian Alice Ford. Anne Page is still in love with Fenton against her parents wishes, however this time both parents wish her to marry a different woman, stemming from their fervent support of Iowa’s legal endorsement of same sex marriage. The play is bitingly funny and masterfully shifts the comedy away from simply the standard cult of Falstaff stuff that typically fills productions of the work. When the cast meets in the finale by the life-size sculpted cow made of butter, there is the unmistakable feeling that you’ve witnessed something daring in scope.

This doesn’t make everyone happy. There were boos at times from sectors of the audience, mostly over political proclamations of some of the characters supporting gay marriage. And there were walkouts both during the show and a significant if not great number of audience members left at intermission. And while not all of this may have been politically motivated, even in one of the more liberal enclaves in Oregon, it was undoubtedly a surprise to see people not sleeping but entirely worked up over one of Shakespeare’s comedies, of all things.

Of course, walkouts were taking place right across the plaza in another production, at least partially inspired by Shakespeare. Another adaptation, this time from Rauch and Tracy Young, had heads spinning with the aptly titled Medea/Macbeth/Cinderella. This long gestating project is a theatrical mash up: simultaneous performances of albeit trimmed versions of Euripides and Shakespeare along with Rodgers and Hammerstein’s 1950s television adaptation of Cinderella. If it sounds confusing, it is, with the cast of all three plays in the same spaces at the same time, speaking their lines at moments right on top of one another but mostly at strategic intervals to highlight the many intriguing dramatic parallels between these unexpected bedfellows. Rodgers’ bubbly, fluid score percolates along throughout as a counterpoint to the highly dramatic elements of the other works. Yet despite all the points the show scores, it can tend toward drudgery all too easily like some artful academic treatise on theater that sucks the spirit out of each of its component parts. The show lacks the touch of Hugo von Hofmannsthal’s ability to take an unexpected mash up and generate something pointed but thriving in its own right. There is again some clever gender reassignment with Lady Macbeth played by a man in drag, Christopher Liam Moore, and Jason being played by Lisa Wolpe. But even for some of the sophisticated theater audiences of Ashland, the show feels cold and academic losing its spirit along the way.

Not everything is a radical experiment though. This year’s festival is offering a Romeo and Juliette set in 19th Century California and a straight forward interpretation of As You Like It. But perhaps the best Shakespeare to be seen in Ashland this summer is the final installment of Joseph Haj’s trilogy of plays about the ascension of Henry V to the throne. Henry V stars John Tufts is the title role and he sinks his teeth into this meatiest of parts as the young king decidedly and sometimes viciously turns his back on the past in order to rule a kingdom. Haj and his production team again go for a hybrid contemporary/in period look that pops with color against a grey set on the outdoor Elizabethan stage. Haj and his excellent cast tap into the dreadful inevitability of the play and make it one of the most effortlessly thought provoking of this season’s shows. Of course there is still plenty of time to sample all of these productions in Ashland where the season continues into October outside (Henry V and Merry Wives) and November inside (Madea/Macbeth/Cinderella). And even if you only sample the Shakespeare, you won’t leave without seeing some of this season’s biggest surprises.

Labels: Oregon Shakespeare Festival

It was rather a perfect weekend in Ashland, Oregon, with comfortable, clear summer weather and a slate of particularly strong and well thought out productions from The Oregon Shakespeare Festival. The festival season, one of the strongest in recent years, runs through November with the outdoor Elizabethan Stage open until early October with plenty of Shakespeare and comedies to please just about anyone. But while there is a lot of the familiar, the two world premiere plays now on offer may be stealing the whole show this summer. They are undoubtedly a testament to the vision of Artistic Director Bill Rauch and the company’s commitment to producing new plays as part of American Revolutions: The United States History Cycle. These two new works, Robert Schenkkan’s All The Way and UNIVERSES’ Party People, are the third and fourth fully-staged productions in the series. They are companion pieces in a sense, each delving into the civil rights movement and its aftermath from two different perspectives – the corridors of power in Washington, DC, and the community activism in the streets of America in the late 1960s. The two plays also may be the most successful shows yet to come out of the commissioning series.

Schenkkan’s All The Way is stunningly affecting. It’s that rare breed – a contemporary history play. It is easily the most successful and gripping example of its kind since at least David Hare’s 2004 Stuff Happens. The subject is Lyndon B. Johnson’s year in the U.S. President’s office from his swearing in following the assassination of John F. Kennedy until his election to his own full first term in the same office in 1964. Needless to say, the lead role of the tough, brash, arm-twisting Texan is a plum one, and Jack Willis gives a whirlwind, uncanny performance in creating the part. Schenkkan fleshes out historical events with dialog that cleverly rings of truth without succumbing to easy sentimentality. The role of LBJ in All The Way is the kind of vehicle big name stars will jump at in the hopes of a Tony award with its colorful language, nuanced characterization and cultural caché. Of course, the show is filled with numerous juicy roles of other major historical figures including Martin Luther King, Jr., J. Edgar Hoover, George Wallace, and more political and civil rights figures than you can shake a stick at. Schenkkan can’t resist including both former senators Strom Thurmond and Robert Byrd in the mix as well to point out that even these august legislators failed to come down on the right side of history when it really mattered. Director and Festival Artistic Director Bill Rauch keep all of this cacophony of voices focused and moving toward the inevitable. The show also benefits from one of the festival’s strongest suits, its rich ensemble of repertory players. The play is filled with dozens of roles and most performers take on several of them over the course of three hours in a variety of colorful American accents. But Schenkkan keeps the focus on the sweep of history allowing the inherent drama of the events to drive the action including the machinations behind the passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act and the subsequent Freedom Summer of 1964 leading up to the Democratic National Convention in Atlantic City in that same summer. This is powerfully moving stuff and it’s done expertly. And in the end it passes the greatest test of a history play – it makes your heart thrill with anticipation for events that you already know the outcome of in advance.

Of course, while LBJ serves as the hero in All The Way, he is an overshadowing villain to the 1960s ex-radicals who populate UNIVERSES’ Party People. UNIVERSES is a New York-based theater collective whose primary members, Mildred Ruiz-Sapp, Steven Sapp, and William Ruiz, all serve as authors and performers in this new collaboration with the festival. Party People is much more loosely structured and revisits the lives of ex-revolutionaries of the Black Panthers and Young Lords movements that sprung up within the same civil rights movement depicted in All The Way. However this time around, UNIVERSES adds layer upon layer of other artistic traditions to the play including musical performance, dance, and live streaming video technology. The end result is bewitching to watch if not always successful in its broader purpose. The central conceit of the play, which at times seems grafted on to fit the poetry and musical performances contained within, concerns two young contemporary activists, Jimmy and his friend Malik, the son of a Black Panther currently spending life in prison. The two have concocted a gallery show cum tribute cum performance art piece in which they have invited a large array of former members of both movements to come together to tell their stories, meet one another again, and peruse a variety of objects and filmed testimonies from the period. What the guests don’t know is that the two have concocted a confrontational theater performance in which Jimmy dresses as a clown and proceeds to berate and interrogate their “guests” about the failures and inherent political and ethical contradictions in their actions at the time. In this way Party People owes as much to Thomas Vinterberg’s The Celebration as it does anything else.

It can make for some disquieting and uncomfortable moments in the show, which isn’t a bad thing at all. The hodge podge of musical and poetic elements is heady and often beautiful. But the tonal shifts don’t always add up and when they do, it exposes the lazy ideological heart of the work. A multitude of issues about the failings of these revolutionary movements and their aftermath are covered almost in a forced, check-list like fashion. In the end the only reason the architects of this contrived celebration, Jimmy and Malik, have to offer for its existence are hollow now ludicrous sounding tropes about the importance of digital and social media in communicating to young people about this important part of their history. If the filmed byproducts of the gathering aren’t available on Facebook, young people will never be able to access the history of their own revolutionary movements, the tired old canard goes. But if one can overlook this somewhat desperate ploy, the show still offers enough clever musical elements and a bracing visual staging that make the show a worthwhile counterpoint to the very same history so expertly depicted elsewhere at this year’s festival. Both shows will run through November 3rd.

Labels: Oregon Shakespeare Festival

If you’re looking for good old-fashioned stagecraft for its own sake in Ashland this spring, it’s easy to find. But perhaps the most comprehensively satisfying production onstage now at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival is Libby Appel’s adaptation of Anton Chekhov’s The Seagull. I’ll admit my bias outright – I love Chekhov. Can’t get enough of it. The romantic tortured souls. The long-winded circuitous beauty of it all. And that ever-present feeling of decay and the desperately maintained denial all of characters share to a greater or lesser extent. Appel, OSF’s Artistic Director Emeritus and Bill Rauch’s immediate predecessor in Ashland, is a lover of Chekhov as well, having directed many of the Russian great’s work here. She returns to the New Theater to direct this clear and decidedly modern language translation that sparkles as the world it depicts seem to vanish in the twilight giving way to evening.

Irina, played by Kathryn Meisle in her OSF debut, is a famous actress who has returned home with her young lover and celebrated author Trigorin, a dreamy Al Espinosa. She disdains the protean artistic efforts of her own son Kostya, a radiant and passionate Tasso Feldman, who's fallen for the daughter of a farmer on the neighboring estate, Nina, played by Nell Geisslinger, who dreams of being an actress herself. No one here is truly happy, with each player madly desiring another they can never have, and even if they do manage to connect, hold the other only temporarily. Tragedy ensues and a heart crushingly slow pace with doom seated at the table from the opening. Appel and Horsley have shifted the axis of focus toward the three primary women in the play, Irina, Nina, and Masha, the farm caretakers daughter who unrequitedly loves Kostya in another wonderfully realized turn from Kate Hurster. The women in Seagull sometimes risk being portrayed as little more than commodities of exchange between some spectacularly troubled men. But here Irina is portrayed as more forcefully in charge of events and the relationship with her son more darkly hued and less immediately affectionate. Of course, Nina metaphorically represents the bird of the title, and here it is much more her tragic story than Kostya that dominates the show. Seagull is splendidly done and should be on any visitor's list to see this spring in Oregon before it closes on June 22.

Across the plaza, meanwhile, in the Bowmer Theater is the season’s main comic offering, George S. Kaufman and Morrie Ryskind’s Animal Crackers. Even if the name isn’t familiar, much of the show will be to audiences since this 1920s production is mostly remembered as a vehicle for the Marx Brothers. As with the films that followed, the Marx Brothers didn’t play characters in their theatrical performances other than the ones they had created for themselves independent of the shows – Groucho, Chico, Harpo and to a lesser extent Zeppo who appeared in both the stage and film versions of the piece. Reviving the show for the modern stage has largely rested on the quality of the impersonations of the Marx Brothers. And OSF has managed to cast three of their own quite well, including Mark Bedard as Groucho/Cpt. Spalding, Brent Hinkley as Harpo/The Professor, and in the performance I saw, John Tufts as Chico who produces the most startling transformation of the three.

The humor is broad and filled with wordplay and the plot it occurs in is mostly insubstantial, though packed with more straight-man characters than you’re likely to be able to keep track of. The exception to this is K.T. Vogt who plays Mrs. Rittenhouse, one of the many characters made famous by the Marx’ long time foil Margaret Dumont. Vogt expertly takes the punches from her cohorts on stage and gives as good as she gets along the way. Of course, the script has been worked over a bit given that there are only so many Coolidge jokes one can deliver in an evening in the 21st Century. And even with that Groucho’s famous warning after a sequence of bombs still stands, “These are the jokes, folks” But as with the Marx Brothers’ stage act, the best parts of this show are the improvisation the players engage in with each other and the audience. Granted some of the improv is designed only to appear that way in a fashion similar to James Cordon’s commedia dell’arte-inspired hit One Man, Two Guvnors, which is about to open on Broadway this spring. All the main players in Animal Crackers get plenty of time in the audience up to and including clambering over seats and viewers and have enough prescreening information on the audience to land some surprise laughter and applause inducing zingers. Needless to say this comic staple of this year’s season will be around in Ashland all the way to November.

Labels: Oregon Shakespeare Festival

As many contemporary critics have argued, Troilus and Cressida is perhaps the most modern of Shakespeare’s plays. Filled with nuance and very pointed questions about honor and love, the play has multiple, sometimes seemingly unrelated storylines that don't resolve in predictable ways. Troilus and Cressida has languished somewhat due to this structure until the 20th Century. Yet, while contemporary audiences are accustomed to this sort of multi-layered approach to storytelling, the play still takes some sorting out. Comedy, romance, and profound reflection on war and peace - there’s so much to do and so little time to do it in. For the Oregon Shakespeare Festival’s current revival of the play, a co-production with New York’s Public Theater, director Rob Melrose was enlisted to craft a convincing and modern take on this most complex of plays.

What’s he and the OSF resident acting company have put together is certainly striking to look at and set in fertile ground. The setting is a contemporary Middle Eastern war zone, very likely Iraq, with the Trojans taking the part of the resident forces and the Greeks becoming Western, most likely American, troops. The thrust stage of the New Theater is framed with Assyrian lion statues and a metal work bridge foregrounding expansive desert and bits of crumbling concrete walls. The design team has gone for some spectacular effects with explosions, fire and showers of sparks in key moments. There is plenty of contemporary stage business as well like rampant drug use among many of the soldiers on both sides (including Thersities who has clearly developed a problem with inhalants). And while the play ends with one of Shakespeare’s biggest battle scenes, Troilus and Cressida is more about what all these soldiers and their lovers are doing in their down time while avoiding the bloody business of combat. It’s their bad behavior outside of combat, including scenes that could have come out of Scarface, that shapes the moral contours of the story.

Of course the titular lovers, star-crossed though they may be, aren’t on warring sides like Romeo and Juliet, but instead find themselves thwarted and eventually separated by the tides or war. The romantic material has its own hurdles to clear with Cressida going from uninterested to amorous to moving on to other pastures in under three hours. Not that this isn't achieved in all sorts of plays, but here it's only a fraction of the action. All of this material is intercut with the ongoing rivalries and conflicts of the warring soldiers on both sides and it is here that Shakespeare fully explores some of the major themes of the price of peace and the tragedy of not being able to achieve it. And yet in Melrose’s take on the play, despite all of its handsome good looks, you’d have to pay pretty close attention or you might miss some of these finer points prior to the concluding minutes of the show. Melrose has gone with the comedy in the story as the main point of connection with the audience and one could be forgiven for thinking the whole show was pretty much a romantic comedy leading up to the first break. Even the scenes among the Greek soldiers are mostly played for laughs until in the play's finale somebody pulls out a big sword and the situation starts getting real. This is by no means an inappropriate choice, and Melrose adds nothing to the play textually that wasn’t there to begin with, but the prior emphasis on comedy makes the final act feel unintegrated and foreign to what has come before.

There are lovely performances from Tala Ashe as Cressida who is as smart and savvy as any general. When Bernard White’s Hector finally gets his say about not sacrificing any more blood over Helen, he’s riveting to watch. Some of the performances felt crowded, such as Mark Murphey's Ulysses who has some of the most poignant material in the whole show but gets sidelined as yet another general in the wake of Elijah Alexander's overly broad and comical Ajax. Peter Macon as Achilles and Ramiz Monsef as Patroclus manage subtle and effective turns with the homosexual subtext of their own story arc. Of course how all these performances and tonal shifts resolve remains to be seen. One of the beauties of OSF is that the lengthy runs in repertory often allow pieces to settle and mature in unexpected ways. Troilus and Cressida will be onstage until November but if you don't have tickets, act soon. The run of this relative rarity is proving a popular choice in Ashland this season.

Labels: Oregon Shakespeare Festival

How do you bring a myth alive for a contemporary audience? What does it take to get audiences to identify with something ancient in a modern context while still maintaining some connection to an older artistic tradition? These are questions familiar to director Mary Zimmerman who has had several notable projects that do just that including her Tony-award winning production of Ovid’s Metamorphoses from 2002. Her latest adaption of a traditional myth or fable opened up earlier this month at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival and is based on the Chinese legend of the White Snake. Zimmerman’s play, The White Snake bears the familiar hallmarks of many of her other adaptations including startling visuals and a preference for a modern, plain vernacular for the characters’ speeches. The show also makes clear reference to the multiple and varied versions of the story that have existed as part of the oral and written traditions used to hand the story down over time. And it is precisely these moments, the more philosophical and ambiguous ones that work the best in Zimmerman’s current staging.

The basic elements of the story concern a hundreds-of-years old white snake that has developed magical powers over time through study including the ability to take human shape. She does, and soon she, with the assistance of her sidekick, a green snake also transformed into a woman, becomes involved with a human male. However, the relationship is eventually exposed by a monk who condemns it as forbidden by natural law. The overtones in a contemporary political climate are obvious, but Zimmerman never directly drags the issue of gay marriage rights into the open in the show. She is still plumbing the same contemporary strains that have recast the myth as a story of forbidden love with two lovers who must overcome their own secrets and opposition by outside moral authorities to be together. That the show is running in repertory with a new production of Romeo and Juliet is clearly not a coincidence.

Zimmerman’s keen eye for beautiful stage images gives this story of love and morality an ideal setting. A largely bare stage sets off the opulent folk-influenced Chinese costumes of the cast. There is a significant amount of video material used for projected scenery and Zimmerman makes broad use of puppets and other enhanced costumes à la Julie Taymor to manage the animal parts of the story line. Ribbons of fabric fall from above like rain and there is one gorgeous tableau after the next in a show with some of the best scenic design and lighting I’ve seen in years. Those credits go respectively to Daniel Ostling and T.J. Gerckens and honestly are reason enough to see the show.

And yet not quite everything clicks as well as it might. There are some profound and outright touching moments in the piece, and Zimmerman and her excellent ensemble cast milk them all. But she’s also going for a very broad palette here, not unlike a Shakespeare play with a little bit of everything from comedy to romance to drama. And while the story is big enough to handle all of these even in the one act, 100 minute running time, the balance feels off. The comic moments in particular can come off pandering at times in the direct, modern language of the text. The audience I saw the show with was not above big group sighs over a romantic kiss or applauding the villain getting his comeuppance. And while every audience is different, it highlighted some of the more manipulative aspects of the scenario which tended to undercut some of the bigger emotional truths and philosophical points The White Snake tries to score later on. Which makes the show a sentimental journey to be sure, but it's still one ultimately very much worth taking.

Labels: Oregon Shakespeare Festival

It’s not too early to start planning for your 2012 summer. And if your interest is theater, your best bet is Ashland, Oregon where the Oregon Shakespeare Festival kicked off its 76th season in February and will reach its full summer schedule in June with nine concurrently running productions. There are lots of summer Shakespeare Festivals around the country, but OSF, under artistic director Bill Rauch has bigger, bolder, and more surprising offerings than most. This year’s line up promises to continue with Rauch’s focus on inventive modern stagings and new American plays. The company’s current new play commissioning program, American Revolutions, which produced Culture Clash’s wonderful American Night from 2010, will see two new premieres this summer. The first of these, and one of the two projects Rauch himself will direct this year, is Robert Schenkkan’s All the Way, which will revisit LBJ’s first year in the president’s office in 1963 following Kennedy’s assassination. The other new play on this year’s schedule takes off in the same time period and moves forward. Chicago theater collective UNIVERSES will collaborate with OSF’s resident artists for Party People about former Black Panthers and other revolutionaries now facing their legacy several decades on. Both of these shows enter the repertory in July and run through the end of the season in November.

Of course, Shakespeare’s name is in the festival’s title, so there is plenty of the drama that made English what it is today to choose from. I personally am most excited about Rob Melrose’s new Troilus and Cressida, which is being produced in association with New York’s Public Theater and which moves the action to the contemporary Middle East. The show will open later this week at the New Theater which next year will be renamed the Thomas Theater in honor of OSF's former longtime Development Director Peter D. Thomas. There are other fresh takes on the English master. In the outdoor Elizabethan Stage in June, Christopher Liam Moore will move Falstaff’s tormentors stateside in The Merry Wives of Windsor, Iowa. And indoors at the Bowmer Theater Laird Williamson is offering a 19th-century California setting for Romeo and Juliet. The rest of the outdoor stage programming for the summer months rounds out the Shakespeare part of the festival with the usual high-quality OSF production values in somewhat more traditional stagings of As You Like It and Henry V.

Much of the rest of the indoor season in Ashland is already underway and includes a number of promising choices. There is comedy, of course, and the company has chosen to revive Kaufman and Ryskind’s Marx Brother’s vehicle Animal Crackers for the Bowmer stage. And on the dramatic side, former festival director Libby Appel returns to direct her own new adaptation of Chekhov’s The Seagull at the New Theater. But perhaps the two most intriguing experiments on the schedule are the Tony award-winning director Mary Zimmerman’s theatrical adaptation of the Chinese fable The White Snake and Bill Rauch and Tracy Young’s wild musical mash up interweaving the stories of Medea/Macbeth/Cinderella. The scope of this latter project doesn’t arrive for a few more weeks but it does keep up the adventure quotient in one of the country’s best theatrical getaways. I’ll be reporting from the festival twice this year including this coming weekend so stay tuned for reports, but in the meantime, check out their site for further details on schedules and tickets. The festival is running now through November 4. And don’t forget to spend at least some of your summertime indoors.

Labels: Oregon Shakespeare Festival

Eddie Lopez and Robin Goodrin Nordli. Photo: Jenny Graham

The hottest ticket in Ashland at this year’s Oregon Shakespeare Festival by my unofficial observation has to be the revival of Gilbert and Sullivan’s The Pirates of Penzance, which is playing on the outdoor Elizabethan Stage through October 8. It's a musical comedy from a team with over a century of very devoted fans. But as any opera fan can tell you, while this can help ensure a show's status as a hit, such devotion can also lead to alienation when people start making alterations to beloved works they see in particular ways. OSF artistic director Bill Rauch helmed this revival and true to his form and desire to connect with contemporary audiences, he has worked with his gigantic cast and crew to tweak Pirates of Penzance into something a bit less quaint and much more familiar. And while audiences including the one I saw the show with last week have been highly enthusiastic, there have been some dissenters, including the one or two loud booers I heard during the curtain calls.

Which seems unfair to me given how enjoyable this show is overall. Probably the most notable and perhaps most controversial change is the substitution of some of Sir Arthur Sullivan’s music with more contemporary beats. Most of the musical numbers contain at least one chorus or refrain where the performers slip into a modern musical idiom be it gospel revival, Las Vegas showtune, or hip hop bravado. These segues never fail to draw laughter and applause, but they are admittedly not going to be to everyone’s taste. I felt they were generally appropriate, however, considering the context and spirit of the work. The Pirates of Penzance is over a century old and was what even its authors would have considered light fare to begin with. What Gilbert and Sullivan were working for was something that entertained the public ,and that was what people wanted to see. They had no illusions about that, so taking liberties with a contemporary revival of their work to make it crowd pleasing seems well within the spirit of the endeavor.

Of course, the OSF production values are as high as ever for Pirates, and what really makes the show in the end are the very committed performances from the excellent ensemble cast. This is a very physical show with lots of dancing and stunts. Watching the ensemble regulars show off their singing and dancing skills is a thrill. Michael Elich makes for a sexy and swarthy Pirate King while Robin Goodrin Nordli is a very funny Ruth. David Kelly pulls off the Major-General’s tongue twister number with ease and no cut in speed. There are a couple ringers in the cast. Eddie Lopez plays Frederic whose over-devotion to duty drives the shows antics. He's got a lovely voice and is young and handsome to boot. Soprano Khori Daastor is the real McCoy, an operatic performer whose graced stages as Lucia di Lammermoor among others. Here she is Mable, Frederic’s paramour, and her strength and piercing clarity at the top of her range made her a joy to listen to. The small orchestra which was perched on the second floor of the Elizabethan stage was conducted by Daniel Gary Busby from the pit. Is it The Pirates of Penzance Victorian audiences saw? No. But they didn't have indoor air-conditioning either. Time moves on and so can Gilbert and Sullivan.

Nell Geisslinger, Michael Winters, and John Tufts. Photo: T. Charles Erickson.

The other outdoor production I saw at this year's festival was Lisa Peterson's staging of Shakespeare's Henry IV, Part II. On the heals of 2010's production of part I, Peterson uses many of the same cast members to continue with the events most maniacally set up in the prior installment. John Tufts is a handsome Prince Hal. But it was Michael Walters relaxed, beautifully paced performance of Falstaff that made the evening. The knight may be a loquacious story teller and a buffoon, but he doesn't always need to be a high-energy blowhard as well. Winter takes the time to revel in Falstaff's personal foibles for a performance that was detailed and tinted with just a bit of heartache, making the climactic scene all the more powerful. Peterson relies largely on a modern dress staging that is clean looking and she keeps the pacing up throughout. It's a quality treatment of one of the better history plays and combined with a number of other excellent shows now on stage in Ashland, it provides a good excuse to get up to Oregon before September comes to a close.

Labels: Oregon Shakespeare Festival

Robynn Rodriguez, Christopher Liam Moore, and Peter Frechette. Photo: Jenny Graham

Ghost Light, the second fully staged new play to come out of the Oregon Shakespeare Festival’s “American Revolutions” commissioning series, is a perfect fit for the company. It deals with a survivor’s personal emotional fallout from a uniquely American historical event, the 1978 assassination of San Francisco Mayor George Moscone and Supervisor Harvey Milk. And given that the survivor in question is Moscone’s son Jonathan, an accomplished theater director struggling with his own ambivalence in completing plans for a new staging of Hamlet, the play’s integration into the spirit of Ashland is complete. Now in his 40s, Jonathan, played by Christopher Liam Moore, has begun seeing ghosts including those of his grandfather and that of an imaginary super-sexy boyfriend, the not at all imaginary super-sexy Danforth Comins. Jonathan’s thinking about Hamlet is dragging up all kinds of unresolved issues about his father’s death and soon his subconscious is spilling out all over the place. Hamlet’s relationship with his father, and more specifically his father’s ghost, soon becomes an unraveling parallel to Jonathan’s own inner life.

But Ghost Light is less thriller or history play than it is a psychological autobiography. What’s more, the play’s impact stems in part from the meta-nature of its creation. The script is credited to Tony Taccone, but there is no doubt that the real-life Jonathan Moscone, the accomplished theater director and artistic head of California Shakespeare Theater, is the author of much of the Ghost Light’s content as well as serving as its stage director for this run in Oregon. At times, the proceedings feel incredibly invasive. But any discomfort from the autobiographical nature of the play is offset by the simple facts that the character Jonathan acknowledges it himself: The story of his father’s death has already been endlessly adapted, repeated, co-opted and distorted by the public who knew him as a famous person. Jonathan’s struggle is resolving his own emotional experience of his father against a world of perceptions about the same events that lie outside of his control. And it’s in this capacity that Ghost Light is most successful, where it questions the boundaries between our personal and public emotional lives.

That is not to say the show in an unqualified success. The scenes in Ghost Light proceed not unlike a therapy session. The show opens with the 14 year-old Jonathan sitting in just such a session answering questions from an unseen therapist. Bits of dreams stand alongside more narrative sequences often with little differentiation. Todd Rosenthal’s set provides suggestions of Jonathan’s apartment and boyhood room spread out around a replica of the façade of San Francisco City Hall. A number of the scenes include the son’s younger self interacting with a character simply called “Mister” going on about emotional abstractions that I found rather difficult to follow. This therapy process journal approach to play writing can muddle things at times and one long’s for the more narrative bits where we learn more about Jonathan in the world and his relationship with his friend Louise, played by Robynn Rodriguez. (Her straight talking performance here is as strong as her turn as Barbara in Letts’ August: Osage County which she is also giving this season.) But muddled or no, Ghost Light is a good second showing for OSF's "American Revolutions" series with its twist on the history play, making it about the personal story and not the events themselves. It runs through the end of the season on November 5.

Labels: Oregon Shakespeare Festival

David Kelly, Terri McMahon and K.T. Vogt in The Imaginary Invalid Photo: Jenny Graham/OSF 2011

Never a stranger to inventiveness and new twists on old favorites, the Oregon Shakespeare Festival may even be outdoing itself with the number of interesting juxtapositions and interpretative takes to the most familiar plays on its stage this year. Bill Rauch moved Measure for Measure into an urban barrio with great success, and there were several other transformations to be marveled at even if they weren’t always quite as successful. The festival is currently also offering an adaptation of Molière’s The Imaginary Invalid conceived by Oded Gross and Tracy Young with some intermittent musical numbers from Paul James Prendergast. Gross and Young had a big hit in Ashland previously with an adaptation of The Servant of Two Masters and now they return with their commedia dell’arte take on the classic French farce. From the outset, it is clear that this Imaginary Invalid will be as broad and as generally crowd-pleasing as possible. David Kelly stars as Argan, the titular invalid, opposite K.T. Vogt as his fresh-mouthed maid Toinette. They are joined by a cast of larger than life relations including a hysterical Terri McMahon as Beline, Argan’s gold-digger wife. The actors repeatedly break the fourth wall engaging the audience directly in the set up of very funny if familiar machinations. The setting is moved to a mid-1960s Paris that swings a little more like London of the period with its go-go boots and psychedelic lighting.

It’s a thoroughly enjoyable show that is total eye-candy. It was also clearly an audience favorite as well. The crowd was in stitches, and the audience interaction sequences produced some of the most animated audience reactions I've heard at the festival. There are drawbacks, however. Young and Gross’ adaptation does become somewhat exhausting over time. The extreme frenetic pace starts out at full bore, yet, while enjoyable, soon has nowhere to go but down when the energy level is eventually forced to scale back. When the sentimental bits that inevitably arise do so, the whole thing begins to collapse like some delicate soufflé cooling as it’s removed from the oven. That doesn’t mean that it doesn’t taste great however, and even if it isn’t the most reflective time you’ll spend in the theater, the show certainly will not pass without a lot laughs.

Danforth Comins weeps over Vilma Silva as the rest of the cast looks on in Julius Caesar Photo: Jenny Graham/OSF 2011

And if the juiced up antics of Molière aren’t your thing, right across the plaza at the New Theater is OSF’s current production of Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar directed by Amanda Dehnert. And, though it was a few steps away, the piece couldn’t have been more different in its heavy-handed and politically-minded spirit. Audiences are greeted with a field of banners emblazoned with the faces and quotes of assassinated political leaders from around the world. This is a Julius Caesar focused obsessively on the political aspects of the play and the way civilizations alternately glorify and vilify their greatest leaders. The staging is completely modern dress and almost without any props save some soapboxes, bare wooden work tables, and buckets of stage blood. The cast is dressed up as commandos for some New York Fashion Week assault on the tasteless in their stylish black and Commes des Garçons-inspired wraps. The actors milled about the audience prior to the show, interacting with visitors and eventually coaching the audience on how to chant and cheer on cue when Caesar enters the stage. This populist theatrical maneuver was more interesting as an idea than in execution, however. The role of Caesar is played by Vilma Silva, one of the company’s long-time MVPs. But as commanding and charismatic as she was, the staging left her Casesar as a bit of a cipher. Dehnert missed an opportunity, failing to use this gender-twist as a point of further investigation into the play. Instead Silva’s Caesar was much like most others you’ve seen. Which could be said for the production as a whole. Despite some overly clever lighting with blinding spots aimed this way and that every time you turned around, the show felt inert. Even with strategic cuts, it seemed to drag at times, and the whole audience-as-Roman-citizens ruse never quite jelled. But considering the number of successful experiments OSF is pulling off so far this year, one misstep is hardly a high price to pay for taking interesting risks. Both The Imaginary Invalid and Julius Caesar will run well into the fall.

Labels: Oregon Shakespeare Festival

The Cast of August: Osage County. Photo: Jenny Graham/OSF 2011

One measure of a great play is how well it survives when it is produced by theater companies outside of the bright lights of Broadway or part of some national tour. When a work gets out and about among regional theaters large and small, can it still pack the same emotional punch that makes audiences want to return to it again and again? Tracy Letts’ landmark August: Osage County is starting to meet that challenge across the U.S.; and the Oregon Shakespeare Festival has been quick to take up the work for their own excellent company. The first thing that struck me seeing the play now away from its original 2007 Steppenwolf/Broadway staging is how large the work is. There is a big ensemble cast of 13, (well at least big by the standards of the current economically challenged American theater) and the majority of them spend most of their time on stage. The script calls for several different interior rooms spread out over two floors and an attic. And the play itself is three acts that runs over three and a half hours. It’s no small undertaking, but the good news is that Christopher Liam Moore’s staging for Ashland demonstrates that a company with the requisite ambition can pull it off. OSF’s August: Osage County manages to be more than a faithful reproduction of a fantastic original. It’s a splendid revival that further argues for the importance of Letts’ masterpiece.

Judith-Marie Bergan and DeLanna Studi Photo: Jenny Graham/OSF 2011

August is a comedy, but a decidedly downbeat one. The three daughters of Beverly and Violet Weston, along with their significant others, have gathered together following their father's unexplained disappearance. They are also joined by Violet’s sister, Mattie Fae, and her family. The Weston’s are an all-American clan of the plains and their own unique brand of dysfunction unfolds deliberately over the course of the performance. Violet is a hard woman, to put it mildly, and the irony of her struggle against mouth cancer is lost on no one. There are lovely, detailed and perfectly packaged scenes that unfold one after another as things fall apart including a superb set piece in the second half of Act II where a large family dinner crosses the fine line from passive to active aggression. And while the play is filled with big laughs and more than a few surprises, it is not a feel good family drama. Letts is after big game here like the American Dream and the myth of American progress like some latter-day Great Gatsby. No one walks away unscathed in this culture war, and all of these characters are ostensibly on the same side.

Bill Geisslinger and Robynn Rodriguez Photo: Jenny Graham/OSF 2011

OSF’s staging manages to arrange all of the Weston’s home on a two level set that maintains the requisite rooms, but envisions a more cozy space where the privacy of any conversation in the Weston’s home is called into question. It’s a nice touch that reinforces the notion of the many open secrets that plague this family. Moore’s approach to the Weston’s softens some of the harder edges of the family. Judith-Marie Bergan’s take on viper-tongued Violet is kinder in its view of her cognitive decline than some of her predecessors in the role. However, this works beautifully in collaboration with Robynn Rodriguez’ take on oldest daughter Barbara, who is decidedly less sympathetic than I’ve seen before, making the relationship between mother and daughter more intriguing and logical.

This is a family of rather unpleasant people, and where the audience places its allegiance and connection is a critical issue. To date, that locus of identification has typically gone to Ivy, the middle daughter whose years of suffering close to her mother have left her numb. Terri McMahon’s Ivy is particularly removed, almost to the point of being autistic. It’s a choice that brilliantly forces more connection with Johnna, played to perfection by DeLanna Studi, the Native American housekeeper Beverly hires to help with Violet, and who serves as the spiritual center of the work. Johnna's ascendance is the final link in shifting the audience away from seeing the Weston’s as a comically exaggerated melodramatic version of their own lives. Instead we are asked to identify with Johnna whose connection to the poetry of T.S. Eliot and stance as an outsider reinforces the loftier and infinitely more piercing aspects of Letts’ critique. Who are we Americans and how on earth did we get where we are, so far away from what we once were?

But perhaps I make August: Osage County sound heavier than it is. I could go on and on about the other wonderful members of the ensemble. Kate Mulligan is the best Karen I've yet seen. Bill Geisslinger's Bill Fordham and Jeffrey King's Steve Heidebrecht are both marvelous. The audience gasps, hearts race, and there are still peels of laughter. But don't take my word for it, go see for yourself. While these laughs may not come easy, OSF’s August: Osage County is surely a highlight of this year’s season; and a visit to Ashland would not be complete without it.

Labels: Oregon Shakespeare Festival

Frankie J. Alvarez and Kenajuan Bentley with Alejandra Escalante and Tyrone Wilson in the back Photo: David Cooper/OSF 2011.

It was cold and rainy when I woke up in Ashland, Oregon, on Saturday. And while it’s not ideal weather for the first weekend of summer, the Rogue Valley is one of those places in the world that retains its beauty regardless. The low clouds wrapped around the mountaintops that surround much of this town. Given the weather though, it was good to be indoors this weekend checking out what's in store on two of the three stages of the Oregon Shakespeare Festival. (The outdoor stage kicks off previews of this year's three productions next starting this coming week.) I started at the top with one of the company's the cornerstone Shakespeare productions for the year, Measure for Measure. Directed by Artistic Director Bill Rauch, the production fits in well with the expansive and fresh vision Rauch has laid out for the entire festival. The show veritably crackles with excitement and electricity. Yes, I am talking about Measure for Measure and I know that this is not a description typically associated with this thorny comedy. But I was grabbed from the minute the lights went down and continued to be surprised virtually all the way through.

The play is updated to the late 20th century in a quintessentially urban America that makes you think Shakespeare’s Vienna may well be in Southern California. The action unfolds in a single neon lit room with long rows of windows at the back reminiscent of some institutional meeting room. The flexibility of so stark a space is quickly revealed, however, when the audience realizes that the viewable space behind the set often serves as another arena for related action to play out simultaneously as a myriad of video projections set other scenes on the scrims behind it. Shakespeare's many interiors, from courtrooms to bawdy houses, transition between one another like liquid. But the strong visual sense is only part of it. The show opens with three female mariachi singers who originally enter disguised as cleaning women, but soon reveal themselves as the wandering players that will return on occasion to provide an exclamation point on the proceedings. Claudio, played by Frankie J. Alvarez, and Isabela, a wonderful Stephanie Beatriz, have come from a barrio populated with any number of Shakespeare’s sympathetic bawds including a drag queen Mistress Overdone, the hysterical Cristofer Jean. It’s a diverse urban world that any modern American would immediately recognize.

René Millán and Stephanie Beatriz Photo: David Cooper/OSF 2011.

Yet, despite all these visually sharp modern trappings, Rauch still delivers a rather traditional version of Shakespeare’s play. Some times surprisingly so. Measure for Measure is a comedy, and there is more than a little ribald sexual humor in it. And while anyone can insert a few pelvic thrusts here and there among the actors, Rauch really delivers the goods giving the actors license to produce the kind of amused gasps and groans that were undoubtedly the author’s goal centuries ago. I won’t say more and spoil the fun, but I will say that there is far more punch to this staging than what most modern audiences have come to typically expect from a Shakespeare play. (Or at least come to expect in places outside of Ashland in recent years.) Admittedly though, as faithful as this approach may be, it doesn’t resolve all of the play’s inherent problems. The Duke’s motivations in turning over his authority to Angelo and Escalus still seem overly contrived as does his subsequent plotting over the fortunes of Isabel and Claudio. The testing of Isabela’s virtue by all of the men in the play still comes off as strangely cruel at times. But the play remains relevant especially in a culture where the politics surrounding morality and virtue continue to drive much debate.

I’d be remiss not to mention some of the other great performances in this ensemble cast including Anthony Heald as the Duke and René Millán as Angelo. The comic timing of Kenajuan Bently as Lucio and Ramiz Monsef as the auspiciously named Pompey often stole the show. Productions here in Ashland benefit from the strength of their ensemble casts and this Measure for Measure is a joy to watch from beginning to end. It was equally exciting to see the play as I did on Saturday afternoon with an audience heavily populated with adolescents who seemed just as excited and taken with the show as I was. If Rauch's goal is to get more young people excited about Shakespeare, the anecdotal evidence from this performance suggests that his strategy is working. The show will run the length of the entire season this year until November 6 and should be on the must-see list for anyone visiting Southern Oregon this summer.

Labels: Oregon Shakespeare Festival

Anthony Heald observes Stephanie Beatriz and Frankie J. Alvarez in Measure for Measure. Photo: Jenny Graham/OSF 2011

One of my favorite places to visit during the Summer is Ashland, Oregon. Just minutes north of the California border in the beautiful Rogue Valley, the city is home to Southern Oregon University and one of the nation’s biggest summer theater festivals. Now in its 76th year, the Oregon Shakespeare Festival will again present 11 plays in three theaters over a nine-month period. It’s no small task, and the incredibly high quality of the productions there in the midst of such beautiful surroundings makes it an ideal summer getaway. The festival has been under the direction of Bill Rauch since 2007 and the 2011 season currently under way, bears the unmistakeable stamp of his boundary pushing vision and interest in new work that audiences in Southern California will be familiar with from his days at South Coast Repertory.

Mark Antony (Danforth Comins) grieves for his dead Julius Caesar (Vilma Silva). Photo: Jenny Graham/OSF 2011

To talk about any season in Ashland is to start with Shakespeare. Rauch’s Shakespeare strives to connect with contemporary audiences with a variety of updates and modern twists. He directed many works for the festival now as both a guest and the festival's Artistic Director including an excellent Two Gentlemen of Verona and last year's popular high-gloss Hamlet. His production of Measure for Measure is one of this year’s highlights moving the action into an urban barrio in the 1970s. Rauch has also upped the ante on the festival’s long-standing commitment to diversity in casting and productions by opening up further opportunities for actors to take on big roles in ways you might not expect. The New Theater will host Amanda Dehnert’s take on Julius Caesar starring Vilma Silva in the title role. There are interesting tangential takes on other works as well with Carlyle Brown’s, The African Company Presents Richard III which will arrive in the Bowmer Theater on July 20 looking at a meta-drama about rival productions of the Shakespeare text produced in a racially divided 1820s New York City. Rounding out the Shakespeare docket will be two productions on the open-air Elizabethan Stage, Henry IV, Part II and Love’s Labor’s Lost both of which will kick off in early June.

The Cast of August: Osage County. Photo: Jenny Graham/OSF 2011

Bill Rauch’s other directing job this season will also be on the Elizabethan Stage. Under his guidance, the festival has ventured into more non-Shakespeare territory on the outdoor stage and this year brings a hopefully all-swashing, all-buckling Gilbert and Sullivan’s The Pirates of Penzance which I know is the show I’m most anticipating this year. Of course there is plenty of new and recent work at the festival this year. The festival continues its “American Revolutions” series of new plays with Tony Taccone’s Ghost Light which will open in The New Theater on June 28th. This partially autobiographical story will revisit the life of George Moscone, the former San Francisco mayor who was notoriously assassinated in the 1970s alongside Harvey Milk, and his relationship with his son Jonathan, who has developed and will be directing the new play. The festival will also mount productions of two recent successful plays, Julia Cho’s The Language Archive which had its premiere at South Coast Repertory and Tracy Letts’ multi-award winning masterpiece, August: Osage County.

Rounding out the season will be a Molière comedy, The Imaginary Invalid and a stage adaptation of Harper Lee’s classic, To Kill a Mockingbird both of which will appear on the Bowmer stage. And if all of this isn’t enough, the festival will also take a detour into a more interactive production entitled WillFul, a “site-specific theater event” that will involve interactions with various OSF actors and an audience that is on the move. This new adventure will unfold beginning August 7. I’ll be reporting from the festival over Memorial Day and just before Labor Day to bookend the summer and hope you get the chance to get away to one of America’s great festivals this year as well.

Labels: Oregon Shakespeare Festival

Dan Donohue as Hamlet Photo: David Cooper/OSF 2010

With all of the exciting new plays at this year’s Oregon Shakespeare Festival it might be easy to actually overlook the Shakespeare part of the festival. That is, it would be if it weren’t for the fact that two of this year’s four Shakespeare productions are being helmed by the festival’s Artistic Director, Bill Rauch. Of course, this isn’t Rauch’s first turn at Shakespeare here or elsewhere, but this year is notable considering he’s chosen two of the more important plays, Hamlet and The Merchant of Venice, in his first Shakespeare directorial efforts as part of a season he himself planned since taking leadership of the festival in mid-2007. (He directed Romeo and Juliet in the summer of 2007 for OSF just after moving into the job as well as Two Gentlemen of Verona in 2006 and The Comedy of Errors in 2004.) I saw both of the Rauch-directed productions last weekend, and his direction indicated some things he sees as important not just for these works, but the festival as a whole. As with 2006’s staging of Two Gentlemen of Verona, Rauch is most concerned with making these classic plays not only relevant, but in fact urgent to a contemporary and, I would argue, somewhat youthful audience. Of course, this is stock and trade in the opera world these days, and certain “updating” techniques are by no means new to OSF itself. But there’s an aggressive edge to Rauch’s vision that has both a political and aesthetic aspect to it.

l - r: Jonathan Haugen, Anthony Heald, and Danforth Comins Photo: Jenny Graham/OSF 2010

One technique on display in both of this year's productions is the desire to make audiences relate more to the plays by making things look more familiar and contemporary. In The Merchant of Venice, characters are dressed in a hodgepodge of Elizabethan and 20th-century garb of various kinds. Bassanio wears both a doublet and jeans as he woos Portia. There are swords and laptops side-by-side in this Venetian courtroom. And while this kind of aesthetic updating can be a rather hollow and oversimplified maneuver, I can appreciate the gesture here. Rauch wants to highlight the notion of Venice as a multi-cultural city where the characters are exploring the limits of tolerance at a confluence of crossroads both in the here and now as well as the past. Rauch is also willing to do a little tweaking of temporal elements for effect. In his vision, The Merchant of Venice opens with a scene from Act IV, when Portia arrives, disguised as a young judge, to a courtroom complete with microphones to rule in the case between Antonio and Shylock with the opening question, “Which is the merchant here, and which the Jew?” The action rapidly shifts back in time at this point to the start of the play as if with a backward tape loop sound effect. But the point is made. Rauch adds his voice to a long litany of directors interested in salvaging this perhaps most problematic of plays by recasting it as a call for tolerance. There are many wonderful performances here and it would be wrong not to single out Anthony Heald’s Shylock and Velma Silva’s Portia.

The players perform "The Death of Gonzago" in Hamlet Photo: David Cooper/OSF 2010

Meanwhile, Hamlet has arisen as perhaps the hottest ticket of the summer in Ashland. Here Rauch goes for broke nearly abandoning any trace of things stereotypically Elizabethan with the exception of the castle’s stone wall that makes up the back of the set. Everything else on stage matches the turquoise lacquer floor underneath. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern become two old female college buddies, the whole castle is equipped with closed-circuit TV and the traveling acting troupe is now a hip-hop ensemble complete with a rap-influenced “Murder of Gonzago”. Some of this works, and some of it doesn’t, although all of it is interesting. When Hamlet appears to Ophelia in the opening of Act III, she is wearing a wire so Polonius and the King can eavesdrop. Half way through Hamlet’s rambling confrontation, she reveals the wire to Hamlet who proceeds with his ranting while kissing her. There are more of these confusing amendments throughout and Rauch again tampers a little with temporal elements. Nearly all of Hamlet’s soliloquies are moved in the play –typically into either the tail end of the scene before or the first few lines of the scene following them. They are instead presented as asides to the audience while the rest of the players stand in frozen poses highlighting the address as an inner thought process. Soliloquy finished, the action resumes right where it left off. This strategy helps keep the energy level high and things moving along at a ripping pace.

But while some of these changes may seem confusing or simply cosmetic, they do create a youthful energy and urgency at times. Rauch may try a little too hard at times to make a connection with the audience, but his efforts pay off more often than not. Dan Donohue, who is perfectly cast as Hamlet, seems young, fragile, and burning hot and fast. It’s rather an "emo" version of Hamlet reminiscent in many ways of Alex Timbers’ characterization of Andrew Jackson in the recent Bloody, Bloody, Andrew Jackson. This Hamlet is a rock star in his red T-shirt and skinny jeans, his ambivalence about revenge linked to a sort of contemporary adolescent malaise about the world. Not many Hamlet's succeed in making you feel that Hamlet and Ophelia are of a different and younger generation than their parents, but there is no mistaking it here. This is a good looking production and despite its flaws, it is undoubtedly a Hamlet for today. It also makes it clear that Bill Rauch’s Shakespeare is not one that is going to take anything lying down.

Labels: Oregon Shakespeare Festival, Out of Town Theater Reviews

l - r: Richard Montoya, René Millán, and Herbert Siguenza Photo: Jenny Graham/OSF 2010

One of the new initiatives spearheaded by the Oregon Shakespeare Festival under its recently appointed artistic director Bill Rauch was a major play-commissioning project entitled American Revolutions: The United States History Cycle. The project, under the direction of Alison Carey, is the largest series of commissions in the festival’s history and will result in 37 new plays from a diverse group of leading American playwrights on topics related to and inspired by American history. Up to 15 of these commissions will receive full productions in Ashland over the next decade and the first of these plays, American Night: The Ballad of Juan José comes from L.A.’s own Culture Clash collective. Now as much as I’ve come to love the loose association brand of sketch-comedy-as-theater that Culture Clash has produced for any number of venues in Los Angeles and elsewhere, they seemed like an odd choice to kick off a major new initiative for American history plays.

But I couldn’t have been more wrong. American Night is extremely funny and better yet has an immense amount to say, and not just about the way we as a nation construct our own history, and what it means to be an American. The work is a series of comic skits, but they do lead somewhere very worthwhile. The overarching conceit is that a recent immigrant from Mexico, Juan José, is currently in the throws of studying for his citizenship test the night before the big exam. The play is filled with actual examples of test questions (some of which are projected on the corrugated tin backdrop) and returns to them again and again as a unifying device. Juan José falls asleep on his books only to enter a 90 minute fever dream in which he finds himself drawn into stories of great Americans, many of whom were immigrants themselves at one time, but who have been forgotten or written out of history books. From African American cowboys in West Texas at the turn of the last century to Australian-born labor organizer Harry Bridges, these voices add to the story of America’s history often with a sly smile. Juan José is also exposed to the racism and hatred that have made up the country’s past as well, with visits to the Japanese-American internment camp at Manzanar in the 1940s to a modern day town hall meeting complete with tea-baggers and not-so-thinly-veiled xenophobia.

There are too many funny cameos from historical figures to mention here, but the superb OSF cast, which centers around René Millán's Juan José outdoes itself. Culture Clash’s own Richard Montoya and Herbert Siguenza appear at various points in this American circus and their respective Bob Dylan and Neil Diamond impersonations are worth the price of admission alone. They aren’t pulling any punches here and go after racism of all kinds in an increasingly complex American picture. They're not afraid of politics either, and a closing segment on the recent immigration debate is one of the show’s highlights. But oddly enough, even with all its sharp edges, there’s a patriotic heart to American Night. As much time as the play spends on Juan José’s ambivalence about pursuing American citizenship, it also expresses quite eloquently at times exactly why he should bother doing so in the first place. It may be comedy filled with the most transitory of topics at times, but Culture Clash’s American Night proves to be just about the most perfect way to start a very big project on the very big topic of American History and identity.

Labels: Oregon Shakespeare Festival, Out of Town Theater Reviews

Kimberly Scott and Tyrone Wilson in Ruined Photo: Jenny Graham/OSF 2010

I thoroughly enjoyed seeing Lynn Nottage’s Ruined currently getting a bang-up production at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival. Not that I feel 100% good about that. Nottage's 2009 Pulitzer Prize winner takes inspiration from Brecht’s fiercely anti-war Mother Courage and her Children. Ruined is set in present day war-torn DR Congo and is concerned mostly with the horrific violence, sexual and otherwise, women (and men) continue to face in this part of the world. Mama Nadi runs a local watering hole-cum-brothel where business is king and soldiers, miners, and rebels alike all check their ammunition at the door to honor the house rules. She has carved out a fragile safe haven where she harbors a number of other women who work as prostitutes in an environment far preferable to the violence and death they face outside of her protection. The play is set in motion when Mama Nadi’s contact for goods, Christian, brings her two new young girls she reluctantly accepts into her establishment, Salima and the beautiful Sophie who we come to find out has been “ruined” and permanently disfigured in a violent gang rape at the hands of soldiers.

There is a great deal of trauma in Ruined and the audience, like the characters, are asked to accept it all and yet, keep moving. We learn more about these individual traumas and the bargains everyone has made to keep on living over the course of the play. Meanwhile, the encroaching conflict between government forces and local rebels grows closer and closer to Mama Nadi's, although its often difficult to tell the difference between the sides, a fact reinforced by having the same cast members play both sets of men. Mama Nadi, like Mother Courage, is making a living off the war while still trying to protect her many "children". It’s powerful and often emotional material that brought plenty of tears to plenty of eyes in Saturday’s audience.

But unlike Brecht, Nottage is not interested in alienating the audience, but trying to draw them in emotionally. And truly, Nottage has crafted a play that is easy to access with friendly, likable characters, a strong arching narrative, and relatively clear lines between the heroes and villains. She even throws in the redemptive power of love for good measure. Ruined is an oddly non-political play, especially when compared to Danai Gurira‘s Eclipsed, which deals with nearly identical themes in a similar setting while wearing its feminist orientation on its sleeve. Nottage keeps things a bit more personal in Ruined coating its very awful medicine with plenty of theatrical sugar and craft. But to her credit, the play avoids descending into melodrama and packs no less punch in the final analysis. The performances in the OSF production are spectacular with Kimberly Scott as Mama Nadi, Tyrone Wilson as Chritian, Chinasa Ogbuagu as Salima, and Dawn-Lyen Gardner as Sophie. Director Liesl Tommy (who has also tried her hand at Eclipsed) and the cast have crafted a big and very detailed staging that appears opulent even in its depiction of the worst poverty. Ruined, despite its conventions, is an important play and OSF has done right by it. And if you're in L.A. and can't travel to see it, you're in luck in that the Geffen Playhouse will be mounting it starting on September 7.

Labels: Oregon Shakespeare Festival, Out of Town Theater Reviews

Cristofer Jean (left) and Kevin Kenerly (right) in Throne of Blood Photo: Jenny Graham/OSF 2010

I arrived to beautiful weather in Ashland, Oregon, this weekend for my visit to this year’s Oregon Shakespeare Festival. The festival has been taking a number of exciting new directions under the tenure of artistic director Bill Rauch, and this year’s line-up provides several productions that have grown out of artistic collaborations Rauch has fostered both here and during his long history working in American theaters across the country. Perhaps one of the most promising new projects this year is an adaptation of Akira Kurosawa’s film Throne of Blood for the stage by director Ping Chong. It’s a natural fit for Ashland and the festival considering that Kurosawa’s film is an adaptation of Macbeth to begin with. The show is a co-production with the Brooklyn Academy of Music where it will appear in November.

Ako as Lady Asaji in Throne of Blood Photo: Jenny Graham/OSF 2010

Chong has an ambitious visual sense that makes for one of the most striking productions I’ve seen here in years, which is saying something considering the high quality of OSF productions on the whole. Throne of Blood directly references the visual style of the Kurosawa's film using elements that refer to the cinema. The set incorporates a stage-spanning rectangular screen used for video throughout, often providing hints of scenery or supertitles in the few instances where Japanese is spoken by the characters on stage. Beyond this, Chong, like Kurosawa before him, peppers Throne of Blood with references to Japanese Noh and Kabuki theater traditions. There are at least three visible black-clad and masked stage hands, kuroko, and the actors are moved about at times on platforms, Hiki Dōgu, while striking characteristic poses, mie. These touches and other stylized movements, give the very familiar Macbeth storyline a rather alien air. This is particularly true for the role of Lady Asaji, the Lady Macbeth character played by Ako, who often remains completely still or relies on smooth patterns of Japanese stage movement while her husband, Washizu played by Kevin Kenerly, flits and flails about her in his own struggle for resolve.

But for all of the visually interesting images, Throne of Blood periodically stumbles into self-parody like some Saturday Night Live skit of a samurai B-movie. Shakespeare’s witches are replaced by a “wood spirit”, portrayed by the tall and lanky Cristofer Jean, in white make up and robe with a large white fright wig. He appears in a cloud of smoke seated at a spinning wheel and speaks in a voice heavily augmented with audio special effects. But the wild swings in his characters’ tone from a high-pitched winsome ghost sound to a menacing angry growl were often as likely to produce laughs as fear in the audience undercutting the creepy feel of the scene. Perhaps the bigger problem than any specific effect or characterization, though, in Throne of Blood is the lack of poetry. Blessed neither with Shakespeare’s lines nor the cadence of Japanese, the prosaic dialog is bland at best and unintentionally comical at worst. And while it never reaches “All Your Base” proportions, the text does feel at times like a second class translation from another tongue. But on balance, the elements that work in this stage version of Throne of Blood more often than not outweigh its weaknesses to create a show that is worth seeing in a Shakespeare Festival that is reaching out in several new directions.

Labels: Oregon Shakespeare Festival, Out of Town Theater Reviews