"Hannah and the Dread Gazebo" at Oregon Shakespeare Festival

Oregon Shakespeare Festival photo by Jenny Graham

One last trip to Ashland (for this season) last weekend, and we started off with a world premiere that I'd been kind of looking forward to, if only for the cool name: Hannah and the Dread Gazebo, by Jiehae Park. This was one of those cases where I barely knew anything about the play going in, but I have great faith in the crewe up in Ashland to produce shows that are worth seeing.

I have to say that overall, even though this play was pretty enjoyable and interesting, even a day or two later I didn't remember a whole lot about it. And the memories that I do have are more about aspects of the production than about the play, which is kind of unusual. Let's see where this goes....

The Play

The eponymous Hannah (Cindy Im) is a Korean-American doctor, about to take the certification exam to become a neurologist. Her parents have returned to Korea to be with her grandmother. Out of the blue, Hannah receives a package from the grandmother, with a letter in Korean (that Hannah cannot read, and no one will tell her what it says) and a bottle containing a small rock. Obviously it means something. Hannah tries to call her parents, but can't get through, and when she finally reaches her father (Paul Juhn), he is evasive and makes and excuse to end the call.

So Hannah decides she needs to go to Korea. Arriving at her parents' home, she can hear the TV, but no one answers. Finally she gets her mother (Amy Kim Waschke) to answer the door. It's all kind of comic, but kind of weird. It turns out that Grandma, who had advanced Alzheimer's, has jumped off the top of her senior housing facility, and is presumed dead. Presumed, because she landed in the DMZ that separates North and South Korea, and no one can get permission to go in and find her. The DMZ is supposedly a wild place, crawling with wild animals. Which leads us to a creation myth about Korea, involving a Bear and a Tiger who want to become human, but only one of them can endure the ordeal. I'm unclear why this is the founding myth of Korea.

So we have a mystery to solve (or several, really). What has/will become of Grandma? What is the meaning of this rock? Why does Mom want a gazebo, when they live in an apartment?

Ultimately, the play is about family and home, but largely viewed through the lens of separation: family living on separate continents, living separated from their culture, living in a country separated from itself, family members unable to communicate their feelings, etc. The questions raised are fairly interesting, but I'm not sure beyond giving us a glimpse of the situation the play offers much in the way of answers or even directions toward answers. The writing and characters are nice, but in the end, not very satisfying.

The Production

As one expects at Ashland, the acting is terrific, and the designs are clever and well-executed. The staging is pretty minimal, so the burden is on the actors to set the scenes with the help of light and sound. That's all pretty effective: we enjoyed the show and appreciated the quality of the production.

I guess, as noted above, that what felt missing was a sense of purpose and direction. We expect that Grandma's missive to Hannah has great meaning, and that going to Korea will reveal that over the course of the play. But not so much. Even at the end, Hannah and her family are still wrangling with that question. And it's not clear to me that this sojourn through Korea ultimately has much impact on Hannah's life. But we do get a song at the end (pictured above), so there's that.

The production obviously aims to take the edge off what could be a fairly dreary family drama (hey, Grandma jumps off a building, and depressed Mom might not be far behind!) by playing up the comical situations. Which is fine: humor is a good way to help a serious message come through. But truly, I don't know what the message was supposed to be. It feels as if directory Chay Yew was so busy trying to make us feel good about the situation and distract us with zany character portrayals that he forgot to make sure there was a clear message at the end.

Bottom Line

It's a high-quality production, well designed, acted, and produced. I just wish the play had a bit more to offer in the way of actual story, as opposed to anecdotes and scenes. I'm sure Park had something in mind, but what it was, I really can't say.

So it's worth seeing, but falls a bit short of being anything really memorable.