"Detroit '67" at Aurora Theatre Company

Aurora Theatre Company photo by David Allen

For my first taste of the fall season in the bay area theater community, I caught a production of Aurora Theatre Company's first show of their 2018-2019 season, Detroit '67 by Dominique Morisseau. The first of a trilogy of plays by Morisseau about her hometown. This one is set in July of 1967.

The Play

The late 1960s saw a rash of urban incidents, many of which got classified as "race riots," though that term probably doesn't accurately reflect the actual conflicts going on. Yes, race was a big factor as dissatisfaction with decades of racism and segregation boiled over.

Detroit '67 takes place in a basement in the center of the black community in Detroit. With limited options for socializing, many illicit after-hours parties spring up in homes and basements. A bit of booze and a lot of Motown dance music transforms an ordinary basement into a kind of night club. This one is run by Chelle and Lank, in the house they inherited from their parents. Running the parties brings in a bit of extra money. Chelle finds security in this, but Lank has bigger aspirations.

While Chelle is content to hang a few extra Christmas lights to liven up the basement, Lank is looking to upgrade from their balky record player to a new 8-track tape player. And unbeknownst to Chelle, Lank is looking to buy a local bar and run it with his friend Sly. The other friend from the neighborhood, Bunny, pretty much just wants to dance and party as a relief from the drag of everyday life.

A bit of extra disturbance comes into their lives when Lank and Sly bring home a white girl they found beaten and dazed on the street. Caroline is a mystery, evasive about her past and even how she ended up in this situation. But Chelle immediately senses trouble, while Lank insists that they have an obligation to help her.

So here we have an internal conflict that in some ways mirrors the conflict going on outside in the street. As the mostly white, often corrupt, police force cracks down on both legitimate clubs and bars as well as the after-hours parties, the characters in the play find themselves torn between ideals and dreams and the harsh reality around them.

The one thing everybody can agree on is the Motown sound, and the music provides a delightful backdrop to the whole show.

Stylistically, the whole setup obviously owes a lot to August Wilson's cycle of plays about Pittsburgh through the 20th century. By focusing on a small group of people in a single spot at a key moment, we get a personal insight into the larger social tides.

The Production

The key to the production is making a believable version of 1967, which is made easier by setting the whole play in one room. The basement, the decorations, the furnishings, and especially the music and costumes really worked. Having lived through 1967, I found it pretty convincing. The costumes by Kitty Muntzel were particularly good, and the set designed by Richard Olmsted  were excellent. And it's hard to go wrong with a Motown soundtrack (and some riot effects) courtesy of sound designer Cliff Caruthers and associate Elton Bradman. All of that felt very familiar.

More jarring was some of the language, particularly hearing the police almost uniformly referred to as "pigs." It felt authentic, but definitely hit my adult sensibilities pretty hard.

The acting was really quite good. Particularly I felt the supporting characters, Bunny (Akilah A. Walker) and Sly (Myers Clark), felt really authentic, including when they were not the focus of attention. Both felt like real people, not like manufactured caricatures.

The lead actors, Halili Knox as Chelle and Rafael Jordan as Lank, managed a pretty good version of adult siblings with some differences. Knox in particular seemed to have a solid connection to the style and behavior of a woman of the sixties. She conveyed very keenly the desire not to lose ground, juxtaposed nicely with Jordan's upward ambitions.

And director Darryl V. Jones pulled the package together really well. By making the full package feel right, he enables Morisseau's words to sell the conflict of the story.

Bottom Line

This is a very good play, and extremely well done, both by the actors and critically by all the supporting artists who make the setting believable.

As luck would have it, the show has been extended all the way to October 7th, so there are still two full weeks of shows you can catch, and I would recommend that you do. This is kind of Aurora at its best, pulling together a solid cast and crew in a relatively simple but totally recognizable setting.

"The War of the Roses" at Cal Shakes

Cal Shakes photo by Kevin Berne

As I noted recently, there are not very many Shakespeare plays that I have yet to see performed. Among those is the set of history plays collectively depicting the life of Henry VI, which comes in three parts as written. Because of its sheer length and verbosity, the trio of Henry VI plays is rarely produced at all, and is generally condensed considerably. So I've seen bits and adaptations, but never a full version.

I'm in something of a quandary now, after seeing the California Shakespeare Theater production of The War of the Roses, which they describe as adapted "from William Shakespeare's Henry VI trilogy and Richard III". Totaling almost four hours (including an intermission), Roses is roughly half and half of the Henry plays and Richard III. So I still haven't seen a full version of Henry VI, but I have now seen a lot of it.

The Play

As usual, I'm not going to try to summarize the plot of Shakespearean history plays. This basically picks up with the untimely, relatively young death of Henry V, whose son Henry was crowned king as an infant. His uncle Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester, served as Lord Protector until Henry achieved his adulthood and dismissed him. Meanwhile, the French territory won by Henry V was slowly frittered away, and ultimately bargained away by the Earl of Suffolk, who has designs of his own. So there is dissension and unrest in England under Henry, and lots of intrigue and machinations within the extended royal family.

The big split in the ruling Plantagenet family comes between the factions nominally supporting Henry (including Suffolk) called the House of Lancaster, and opposing him, led by the Duke of York and called the House of York. The factions signify themselves with red or white roses, respectively. Hence, the name of the play. Because the conflict does devolve into civil war (more than once) between the factions.

And of course loyalties switch as we go along. Ultimately, this all traces back to the same contested lines of succession that characterize the several generations (and four Shakespeare plays) reaching back to Richard II and his rival, the eventual Henry IV. Rising from the ruins of the House of York as the Henry portion of the play winds down, York's sons, including Richard, who will eventually connive his way to the throne as Richard III.

It's a lot to keep track of over the course of many hours. The program had helpful text and illustrations to help out, but mostly it's just fun to watch all the backstabbing and manipulation.

The Production

Given the plethora of characters in the story, they manage to cover them all with a relatively modest sized cast. Everyone plays multiple roles, but never at the same time. As director Eric Ting noted in his curtain speech, the actors only assume new roles when their previous characters die. As luck would have it, lots of characters die in this play.

There are some really terrific performances in this show. Several veteran local actors provide their usual excellent contributions, including Stacy Ross (Humphrey, Edward IV, and the Dutchess of York), Aldo Billingslea (Warwick, Buckingham), and Catherine Leudtke (Winchester, Elizabeth Grey). Some of the younger local stalwarts put in great performances, too, notably Lance Gardner (Suffolk, Rivers, Tyrrel) and Jomar Tagatec (York, Louis XI, Stanley).

I can't go without commenting on the performance of dependable local actor Danny Scheie as Richard III. As he grows from one of York's vengeful sons to become Duke of Gloucester, his menacing, conspiratorial, and eventually maniacal behavior grows steadily and rather quickly. Unfortunately, by the time he's becoming King Richard III, there's not much room for him to build anymore, so it gets a bit old. Also, his years of comic roles seem to seep into his Richard at somewhat odd moments or in inappropriate ways. Overall I found his Richard III much less compelling than his younger roles, which surprised me because if anything, he's a bit old even for the older role.

Throughout the production, Joshua Pollock provides an effective soundscape with is guitar from the side of the stage, and occasionally supplies lines for minor characters (and eventually takes the stage as Catesby toward the end). The set designed by Nina Ball is relatively unobtrusive most of the time, but they made good use of it, particularly as numerous characters were confined to The Tower (never a good sign). The throne at the center of the stage (nearly the whole time) makes for an effective center to the story. After all, that's the thing all the conflict is about.

Bottom Line

Although Richard III is a reasonably well known piece, the Henry VI trilogy is pretty rarely performed. But as noted above, a lot of Richard's early development comes in the latter parts of the Henry plays. This adaptation (by Ting and Cal Shakes dramaturg Philippa Kelly) trims the politics around Henry almost to the bone, such that if you don't know the story, it might be hard to follow. On the other hand, it move pretty quickly and preserves most of Richard's bits. I gather Ting and Kelly each wanted to do either Henry or Richard, and compromised by doing both. I suppose it works. I doubt a strictly Henry production would have drawn the degree of interest, and Richard is less interesting without the lead-in.

Ultimately it's nice to see Cal Shakes dipping a bit deeper into the canon for material. Under Ting's artistic direction the company has moved to diversify its offerings in general, so it's nice to see them choosing some less common Shakespeare works, too.

Overall I would say the show was worth seeing: I always enjoy an evening in the outdoor theater, and this one was well done and different. Unfortunately I had to reschedule my original date (because of our trip to Stratford), so ended up seeing the show's penultimate performance, so it's already closed by the time you read this.

But I will say that I enjoyed all three shows of the Cal Shakes season this year, and am looking forward to seeing their remount of last season's black odyssey in a couple of weeks. That should be really good.

"Kiss" at Shotgun Players

Shotgun Players photo by Ben Krantz Studio

I thought this was going to be a really simple write-up, because I'd seen the show as a reading last year. But apparently I neglected to blog about it at the time, so I won't be able to just refer back to that text. Alas!

The current offering at Shotgun is a really interesting play. Thematically and spiritually, it's as if someone decided to mash up Shotgun's 2016 production of Christopher Chen's play Caught with last season's rendering of Sarah Kane's Blasted to produce a consciously self-negating and unnervingly experiential exploration of cultural miscommunication and the horrors of war, all rolled into one.

The Play

As with any play that intentionally undercuts itself, I find it hard to write much about the plot or structure of the play without giving a lot away. Suffice it to say that much like Chen's Caught, each of the four scenes in the play serves to subvert in some manner the audience's understanding of what has gone before. In this case, we start with a pretty straightforward, rather melodramatic rendering of a group of friends gathering in war-torn Damascus to watch their favorite soap opera. We eventually come to understand that this is a play within the play, that a group of actors found a script on the Internet and decided to perform it. When they finish, they treat their audience to a live-via-Internet video chat with the playwright, who is in a refugee camp.

As the discussion with the playwright continues, it becomes clear that the actors have severely misunderstood the script they read, and have a lot of trouble getting clear just what they do and don't understand about the situation in modern Syria. Based on their new understanding, the revisit the script in ways that genuinely amazed me. The artful performance of essentially the same words with an entirely different context is probably the single most impressive aspect of the show. It continues even beyond that, but more I shall not say, for fear of revealing too much.

Suffice it to say that what starts as a pretty simple-seeming little soap opera scene turns out to me much, much deeper when read in the right light.

Chilean playwright Guillermo Calderón wanted to write a play about the situation in Syria, but since he knew almost nothing directly about the conflict, he also decided to write about that: the difficulty of learning and understanding what truly happens in another place, another culture, without first-hand experience. In that sense, the play is quite successful. By depicting artists earnestly trying to convey a message about a situation that they do not themselves comprehend, Calderón suggests the limitations of his own art and abilities, and causes the audience to question what they think they know about such situations, and how they might have learned that.

All in all, it's a very clever piece of writing. I wasn't entirely clear on what Calderón intended from the last scene, but even so, I came away impressed.

The Production

As noted up top, I saw this play in a staged reading at Shotgun last year, so had a pretty good notion of what the play was about. But a full staging made for a much more effective and viscerally satisfying version of the story. Just as one example, having the playwright and her interpreter actually appearing projected on the wall, rather than just sitting on the other side of the stage, is quite satisfying. Similarly, setting the play in a purpose-built living room, rather than adapting the set from some other play, really helps to convey what the actors are going through.

I have to single out actors Rasha Mohamed and Jessica Lea Risco, as the playwright and her interpreter, for managing to act literally behind the scenes and still manage to convey coherent characters when projected on the wall. The fact that they also function in both English and Arabic is impressive, and adds to the general feeling of cultural awkwardness.

The four American actors, played by Roneet Aliza Rahamim, Elissa Beth Stebbins, Wiley Naman Strasser, and Phil Wong, all bring distinct degrees and types of their own biases and misunderstandings to their roles. They manage to represent the earnestness of their endeavor as well as the splintered, inconsistent levels of misinterpretation they all carry. Director Evren Odcikin coordinates all of this chaos quite masterfully. I can see where it would be easy to let this play devolve into a terrible, confusing mess, but Odcikin manages to keep the audience off balance without completely coming untethered.

There's a bit of uncomfortable messing around as we move from the initial presentation to the online session, but that ultimately feeds into the awkwardness of learning that what seemed to be a well-intentioned attempt to convey a political message was in fact not even understood by the messengers. There was definitely a sense of disquiet between the scenes as audience members had to decide for themselves what was really going on.

Bottom Line

I would say this is a good, not great play, but it does some things very well that are difficult and probably necessary right now. Making people question what they think they understand and why, especially across cultural boundaries (that need not be ocean-spanning) is valuable. Perhaps if people start to analyze the kabuki aspects of the way facts and their alternatives filter around our own country, they might feel less certain of their stances in a polarized society that is part of a fragmented world.

In short, the play's not perfect, but it's doing something important, and is really well worth seeing. And as luck would have it, the run as been extended through September 30th, so you still have two weeks to catch the show. It's definitely worth your time.

Stratford Festival 2018

Festival Theatre and swan. Stratford Festival photo by Krista Dodson

This will be a somewhat different sort of post, partly because I'm so backed up, and partly because I don't really feel it's worth writing 5-or-more posts on this festival visit. So...consider this an experiment (much like this trip was!).

What am I doing in Canada?

I've been hearing for years about this Stratford Festival, usually in the context that it's sort of Canada's version of the Oregon Shakespeare Festival we've been attending for the last decade or so. Stratford is a bit less convenient to this Bay Area resident than Ashland, but when the opportunity presented itself, we decided to go.

Specifically, we won an auction at a local theater fundraiser that gave us airfare and lodging and maybe two tickets to a show. Clearly we were not going all the way to Ontario just to see one show, so we planned out a long weekend trip. Last year. Personal circumstances kept us from going last year, but we were able to reschedule for this year's Labor Day weekend, so here we are in Stratford!

Stratford is a lovely little down in Southern Ontario, population something like 32,000. It seems like the main industry is this festival, though there are some others. Mostly it has struck us as a quiet little rural town, quite pleasant and walkable (which is good, because parking is difficult). We have basically parked the rental car we drove down from Toronto at our lodgings and not used it since. Lots of walking! Very pleasant.

We scheduled five plays over three days, with a travel day on either end. We wouldn't have minded adding a sixth play, but the schedule didn't permit it. We had already seen the show(s) on offer tonight, and we didn't want to see the other options we could have swapped for.

Much like the Ashland festival, Stratford's is a large, rotating repertory company spread across three theaters in town. (A fourth is undergoing major renovations/replacement and will reopen in 2020.) Each venue basically has a matinee and an evening show every day, with Mondays dark. All three theaters are indoors.

The main theater, the Festival Theatre, is the heart of the festival complex, housing both the 1800+-seat room with a 3/4 thrust stage and the rehearsal spaces, administrative and creative spaces. The 550-seat Avon Theatre is a converted vaudeville house with a standard proscenium stage. Adjacent to it is the Studio Theatre, a roughly 250-seat black box that is at least currently set up in 3/4 thrust.

It's about a 20-minute walk from the Festival Theatre to the downtown area where the Avon and Studio theaters are. If you want a more leisurely stroll, you can walk along the river and see ducks, geese, and swans in abundance. It's quite a lovely feature of the town.

OK, enough of that...let's talk about plays.

Bronté: The World Without

Small play, small theater, and a commissioned premiere at that. This one is in the Studio, and it has only three actors, portraying the Bronté sisters, Charlotte, Emily, and Anne. It's basically a historical piece about these three sisters growing up in poverty, largely confined to the parsonage where they live with their aging father and dissolute brother. For a literary group, they seem remarkably poor at communicating among themselves. They seem mostly to live by insulting one another, and barely seem to even realize they are all writing poetry and novels. Eventually they have to decide whether to publish their work, and that puts additional strains on the relationship.

Overall, it's pretty interesting and quite well acted. Jessica B. Hill as Emily was truly outstanding, and Andrea Rankin as the youngest and least-known sister Anne really blossoms as the play progresses. Beryl Bain plays Charlotte as something of a cipher, so stoic that it's really hard to understand her character's motivations and development.

I found the play itself somewhat lacking in an overall message, but it was a well-done portrait of three characters I knew little about. I would have appreciated a bit more background on how they got to the point they started from. The sibling rivalries are evident, but unexplained, so I'm left to speculate, which seems a bit unsatisfying.

It was a pretty easy introduction to the festival, however.

Paradise Lost

Yet another commissioned work and world premiere--not bad for our first day in town! This one, as the name implies, is based on John Milton's epic poem of the same name, but it's a new play written by local (Hamilton, Ontario native) playwright Erin Shields. It also tells the tale of humanity's fall from grace (including the retelling of the revolt of Lucifer/Satan and the angels), but from a rather different, more modern perspective. The first and most obvious change is that Satan is female (played by 30-year Stratford veteran Lucy Peacock, who is terrific in this role). That changes a lot of the dynamics, and many of the other angels are also played by women.

I thought the best bits in the play came early, as the newly-fallen angels debate how to deal with the fact that they are now in Hell, but the later scenes leading to Adam and Eve (and a clever handling of the serpent) were good, too.

I came in expecting something a bit more staid and Miltonian, but I was pleased with the creative effort in this new show.

Coriolanus

I'm getting really close to fulfilling my goal of seeing the entire Shakespeare canon performed, and one of the plays I hadn't ever seen was this one, about an ambitious and arrogant Roman soldier who moves into politics but has a huge falling out that leads him to join with his rival to come back and fight against Rome.

André Sills as the title character is quite brilliant, as is Lucy Peacock (again!) as his mother, Volumnia. And the conception of the production, from Director and Set Designer Robert Lepage, is clever, maybe even brilliant. The execution of that design seems a bit self-absorbed; particularly early on, there are transitions that are just too long and slow. But the overall presentation, very cinematic and paced more like a TV drama than a Shakespearean play, does highlight the interactions of celebrity, media, ego, family, class, and connections that all combine to bring down Coriolanus.

But there are other elements that I just couldn't quite fathom. The dress and setting is contemporary, but the projected sets are (largely) Roman period, so there is a lot of dissonance that I can't quite reconcile. And underlying everything is probably the fundamental reason this play isn't produced very often: the main character is just really problematic. It's really hard to understand how he ends up in the situation he does, how the combination of his ego and his boosters' interests culminate in a  thoroughly unstable position. But the bits around it are all really good, so I guess that's forgivable.

One special treat for us was seeing Stephen Ouimette as Junius Brutus, one of the tribunes. Having just rewatched "Slings and Arrows" shortly before our trip, it was really fun to see him on stage.

On the down side, the access in the lovely Avon Theatre is terrible. We were seated rather near the front, and it took nearly the entire intermission to get out to the lobby. Luckily we were able to obtain drinks we could bring back in, but I shudder to think what would happen if they needed to clear the building quickly.

Overall, an impressive production, and a satisfying way to add another tick to my list of the Shakespeare canon.

A Comedy of Errors

While the rest of the family went off to see The Rocky Horror Show, I decided to see how the festival would treat one of my favorite comedies.

The answer is: very well. This is a crisp, clear, pretty straightforward rendering of this classic mistaken-identity play. Most of the productions I've seen of this play have tried setting it in a different time period (e.g., prohibition-era Chicago or the Harlem Renaissance), those settings generally add a layer of complexity to this already-complex scenario. I appreciated the way director Keira Loughran mostly just let the words and actions handle the humor.

What they did play with a lot was gender. Right off the bat, the Duke is cross-dressed as a dutchess, and we'll soon see that both sets of identical twins (the Antipholuses and the Dromios) are both male/female pairs. But importantly, none of this is an issue: each of the pairs is as interchangeable as if they were truly identical, and it never causes any issues. The androgynous costumes for both sets works really well, definitely less distracting than the drag characters, but those are peripheral anyway.

With my fourth play, it was the third time in the Studio Theatre, and interestingly, all three of the actors who were in Bronté were also in both Paradise Lost and The Comedy of Errors. So I got to see the repertory company in action, with all three in quite varied roles. The Studio is small (about 250 seats), but the seats are rather steeply raked, so you feel as if you're right on top of the thrust stage.

All in all, I was quite pleased with my choice, though the family loved the production of Rocky Horror next door.

An Ideal Husband

Last but not least, back into the Avon Theatre for a matinee of Oscar Wilde's An Ideal Husband. None of us had ever seen the play, but it seemed like it would be fun. We found the first two acts to be a bit tedious, but after the intermission the play picked up nicely and the witty banter and plot twists kept us quite thoroughly engaged. But it definitely felt like the first half could have been either trimmed or somehow paced more quickly.

Other than that, I don't have a lot to say. It was well done, particularly by Brad Hodder as Lord Goring and Zara Jestadt as Mabel, with a comic boost from Joseph Ziegler as the Earl of Caversham, Goring's father. The whole ensemble is quite capable, though, and the sets are well done.

We were glad we persevered and stayed to the end, as the post-intermission acts were quite satisfying. It's not a show I would go all the way to Stratford to see, but being there, it was a perfectly good play to see.

Reflections on the Festival

The first visit to a festival such as this is a bit intimidating. There is a long-time crowd that has a relationship with the town, the theaters, and of course the company. Of note this season was long-time performer Martha James (who we didn't see at all!) starring as Prospero in The Tempest, where her first appearance at the festival in 1962 was as Miranda in the same play. Through 44 years, 65 plays (30 by Shakespeare), she is obviously an institution and a real draw for the long-time attendees.

We got a definite sense of some of this when we took some of the excellent tours offered at the festival. The backstage tour of the Festival Theatre is quite impressive--the size and scope of that complex is rather daunting. But I think we got the best feel for the festival itself with the tours of the warehouse and (especially) the archives. The festival has retained a vast amount of material over the years: scripts, costumes, props, photos, and video, and it's all available to researchers and theater makers. That's pretty awesome. And it also illustrates the long-standing community that has grown up around the festival.

We had a similar experience a decade or so ago when we first went to Ashland for the Oregon Shakespeare Festival. It was a little like walking into someone else's family reunion. But eventually we settled in and now we feel comfortable there, looking forward to seeing what our favorite artists are doing each year, noticing the changes, etc.

I think it's safe to say we'll be going back to Stratford, though perhaps not as often or as religiously as we do to Ashland. The quality of the plays is comparably high, and the little community is quite nice as well.  There is definitely more to see.

In retrospect, it would probably have been nice to see more of their signature productions, the big shows in the Festival Theatre and some of the smaller shows such as Long Day's Journey into Night with several of their long-time stars. I heard great things about both The Tempest and To Kill a Mockingbird, neither of which we had scheduled. Unlike Ashland, it really didn't seem like there was a good way to come in and see everything (or nearly so) in a relatively short period, and that seems unfortunate for a destination theater festival such as this. I know not everyone wants to see two shows a day, every day, but some of us do!

All in all, it was a good trip, and one we'll look forward to making again.

"Good. Better. Best. Bested." at Custom Made Theatre

Custom Made production photo by Jay Yamada

Oh, dear. Getting way behind again. I will perhaps be a bit brief on some of these shows that have already closed.

I was motivated to see Good. Better. Best. Bested. (a co-production of Custom Made Theatre and Just Theater) because it was written by Jonathan Spector, who wrote the excellent Eureka Day that we saw recently at Aurora. So I thought I'd check this out, too. It's kind of a weirdly abstract play, but it does some interesting things very well.

The Play

Set in Las Vegas, GBBB (as I'll call it for brevity) explores the reaction of a potpourri of people to an unspecified, horrific disaster. Everyone in the cast portrays a variety of characters, with none being particularly featured. So it's essentially an ensemble piece with a lot of interwoven storylines. We see a number of different characters, including a bunch of different tourists (of course--it's Vegas), but also a number of locals, including street buskers, an escort, a lounge magician, and so on.

It takes a while to kind of figure out what's going on, as the start seems like a sort of random assortment of vignettes, but eventually we start to see the patterns and interconnections between the characters, and pretty soon everyone is reacting to something awful that has happened, somewhere else. As the news starts to sink in, characters sometimes pull together, but some also lash out and kind of randomly hurt others.

It's ultimately a pretty striking investigation of how trauma reveals character, bringing out both the best and worst in people. I found the use of the non-specific disaster (maybe a terrorist attack, maybe a military strike) to be very effective, both because it allows Spector to explore how people react to the unknown and sudden, and because it doesn't tie that reaction to any particular place or people. That's all kind of magnified by setting the piece in Las Vegas, because there everyone is somewhat detached from home, family, and reality.

There's a lot going on, but ultimately it's a pretty thoughtful and thought-provoking play that stuck with me for a while.

The Production

Like all shows at Custom Made, this one has kind of a low-budget feeling, but that suits my impression of Las Vegas, anyway. The cast all get to show off a bit of versatility. Mick Mize gets to open the show as a sparkly magician, but his predictions don't seem to have tied in to the subsequent action, or maybe I just didn't remember. Jessica Lea Risco gets to be a worldly escort who really gets thrown by the upheaval, bring us into her personal life (much to the chagrin of the tourist who hired her). David Sinaiko really gets shafted, not only being abused by tourists while performing as a human statue, but also having his shoes stolen and encountering broken glass. I think all the male actors eventually end up in the Spiderman suit.

The cast does a good job of pulling a plot out of the assemblage of little bits, without a great deal of support from the design and direction. I suspect that a different crew could refine the message a bit and make something more of it. But here it's largely left to the actors, and they do a credible job.

Bottom Line

So out of the chaos comes some meaning. It's definitely not as polished as, say, Eureka Day, but Spector definitely has something to say here. I'd like to see a company with more resources have a go at this play.

But as often happens, I caught this on one of the final performances of the run, so you'll have to wait for it to show up somewhere else to see what you think.

"Destiny of Desire" at Oregon Shakespeare Festival

OSF photo by Jenny Graham

What better way to end our four-day, eight-play trip to Ashland than with a crazy story presented in the form of a Mexican telenovella, bizarrely melodramatic and overwrought, yet on some level entirely Shakespearean?

Such was the ending of our visit, seeing the hilarious comedy Destiny of Desire by Karen Zacarias.

The Play

For a while I really didn't know what to make of this whole thing. I have no experience with the telenovella style, other than having sort of heard it described. But truthfully, it's just the standard soap opera, but amped up to a truly absurd level of melodrama and seeming to take itself oh, so seriously.

The story opens at a hospital, where two women are simultaneously giving birth. One is the wealthy former beauty queen, the wife of a famous TV actor. The other is a poor servant who happens to clean the other woman's house. Because her baby is terribly weak, the wealthy woman persuades the doctor to switch the babies, giving her the healthy one, and leaving the puny one to presumably die young with her poor, supposed parents.

Nearly eighteen years pass, then the two girls meet and become friends, at which point things start to get really complicated. Meanwhile we get to see just about every soap opera trope you could possibly imagine thrown together in the midst of the play: a mysterious nun, the estranged son returning to regain his father's favor, multiple marital infidelities, and a sort of Cinderella moment at a big party.

It's all played for laughs, but we also get some interruptions from the sidelines, where actors not involved in the scene listen and sometimes react, holding up signs and citing facts and statistics that make the current action pertinent to current U.S. situations.

And at the end, all the complications get resolved by the revealing of true identities, lost loves relocated, and past indiscretions explained away. In short, they concoct a happy ending out of a very bizarre set of circumstances, but it's totally fun and funny.

The Production

One of the joys of a rotating repertory company is that you can sometimes see actors doing things you would never picture them doing. In this show there are several actors who often play serious dramatic roles having a grand time playing broad comedy. For example, the last two actors to play Julius Caesar at Ashland, Armando Duran and Vilma Silva, really camp it up as the wealthy stars Armando and Fabiola Castillo, and its great fun to watch them being so playful.

On the whole, the production values are very high, considering that they are mimicking a low-budget TV serial. So the props and set pieces are simple and cheesy, but the whole thing flows together quite seamlessly, so you have to admire the art of producing something simple-looking that is really complex.

There are small snippets of dialogue in Spanish, but not enough that you'd miss anything much, and the context is very clear. This is not a tough story to follow, although once they start unraveling things, it gets a bit mind-boggling. But by then you're having such a good time it doesn't matter. They've set us up for the absurdity, and it's welcome when it arrives.

Bottom Line

In spite of the little interjections from the cast with insights about how such things as income disparity and working conditions as depicted in the play reflect realities in our actual lives, there is not a lot of substance to the play. We do get some social criticism in some of the forms of the play itself, but really, you can't be thinking too hard about all of this. It is clearly a play meant to be entertaining, and not a lot more than that.

And I'm fine with that. It's extremely well done and a pleasure to watch. In many ways it was the perfect way to end a long, fairly intense several days at the festival.

Unfortunately, we caught one of the final two or three performances of Destiny of Desire. It was only scheduled to run through the first half of the season, to be replaced in the Bowmer rotation by Snow in Midsummer in early August. On the other hand, I suspect this play will be a popular one in regional theater, since it is so entertaining and doesn't require particularly elaborate sets and such. So if you missed it in Ashland, you will likely have a chance to see it closer to home before long.

All told, I would put this in my three favorite shows of the season (of the eight we saw), along with The Book of Will and Henry V. But truly, this was an excellent Ashland season. Seven of the eight shows we saw were really quite good, with only Romeo and Juliet disappointing us. That represents an improvement over the last couple of seasons, where we collectively had the feeling they had made some poorer choices of plays and a couple of productions hadn't been up to our expectations. But this season was a good one, and in fact I would dearly love to go back to catch the two shows that opened after we left as well as seeing The Book of Will one more time.

"Othello" at Oregon Shakespeare Festival

OSF photo by Jenny Graham

Longtime readers will recall that I didn't care for my first taste of Othello, back in 2016 at Cal Shakes. I still stand by my evaluation of that production, in spite of the spirited defenses of it by some people I deeply respect. Different strokes.

So I welcomed the chance to see a more traditional rendering of this classic tragedy, something that should come pretty naturally to OSF (although, hey, they managed to mangle Romeo and Juliet earlier in the week, so anything is possible).

The Play

As before, I am not going to expend any energy trying to summarize this play. Its broad outlines are extremely well known, and when uninterrupted by extraneous material, it can be extremely powerful.

The Production

Director Bill Rauch has chosen to make a few little tweaks to his Othello. The setting is contemporary, and Othello himself (Chris Butler) is still Moorish in the sense of being an outsider and black, but now comes from the Caribbean, and instead of a general he commands the Navy. Otherwise, this is the familiar setup. Iago (Danforth Comins) is his ambitious and racist aide, both inserting doubt into his trusting superior's mind and fanning the jealous flames of racist Rodrigo (Stephen Michael Spencer). That Iago's wife Emilia (Amy Kim Waschke) is both Asian and also in the navy just adds more dimension to the already intricate plot. And Othello's relationship with Desdemona (Alejandra Escalante) seems both more impetuous and more fiery than I expected, but all the better to infuriate her father and the others who would object to the marriage.

The acting, as one expects at Ashland, is outstanding, with Comins and Spencer and Escalante being particular standouts. Butler is terrific, and very consistent with his Caribbean persona, though he tends to hit the top of his rage range a bit quickly, thus depriving some of his scenes of any ability to escalate. But overall the casting and performance is quite excellent.

The production overall is sparse, or perhaps I should say, Spartan. The sets are not elaborate, just enough to convey the needed sense of place. And it all has a sort of generically military feel, sort of aging, drab, and remote. And the Bowmer theater feels quite intimate for what is generally a play staged on a large scale.

Bottom Line

It works. The setting and casting work well together to produce a taut, moving version of the well-known text. Comins is masterful in his machinations, with everyone else serving as willing, yet unknowing, co-conspirators. If anything, it is Iago's fall that feels in some ways more tragic than that of Othello and Desdemona, since he has served as ringmaster for the entire production.

I could probably nitpick about some of the staging of the climactic scene, but I won't. It works well enough.

After waiting so long to see any production of Othello, I have now seen two that are extremely well acted, and one that manages to capture the power and intricacy of the story. Indeed, my wife who had never seen the play staged before said she felt like she doesn't need to see it staged again, that this was such an excellent version that she feels she has seen enough. I pretty much agree that I don't need to see it again any time soon, but I'm glad I have now seen a production that respects Shakespeare's work enough to let it stand on its own. I'm also sure time and circumstances will add context and flavor to the play anew, some day.

But for now, this is an excellent production of this classic. Definitely worth seeing and appreciating.

"Love's Labor's Lost" at Oregon Shakespeare Festival

OSF photo by Jenny Graham

Finished off our third day in Ashland at the outdoor stage again, this time for Love's Labor's Lost. This marks the second time I've seen this play, both at Ashland. And truthfully, I can't really remember anything about the first production, and remarkably little about this one.

The Play

This is an extremely silly play, even by the standards of Shakespearean comedies. The premise at the outset is a bit bizarre, with King Ferdinand swearing an oath with his three students (Longaville, Dumain, and Berowne) that in order to keep focus on their studies, none of the three will have any contact with women for three years. And it's clear from the outset that none of them actually wants or expects to keep this vow. But there you are.

So naturally, before even a day has passed, an emissary comes from the King of France: his daughter, the Princess. Ferdinand has to receive her, so the guys come up with ways to technically keep their vows while still receiving the Princess (and coincidentally, her three attendants: Rosaline, Maria, and Katharine).

There ensues a lot of silliness, accompanied by a lot of clever wordplay. Some plots that involve disguises and swapped identities (because it's a Shakespearean comedy). A few extra clownish characters thrown in for good measure, and you pretty much have "LLL".

It really is fun, kind of like cotton candy for the theater. It's Shakespeare having fun, playing with the language and with some of the tropes he will reuse later in some of his other comedies. But this is one of his earlier comedies, so we get to see him trying things out.

Unlike the canonical Shakespearean comedy, this does not end with weddings for all. One suspects that probably came at the end of the companion piece, Love's Labor's Won, that is now entirely lost to us. We get a pretty happy ending, just not the mass wedding we all expect.

The Production

I suppose it's appropriate that for an early, experimental work, the staging can include some pretty wacky stuff, too. Visually, this is a really impressive show: lots of color, a band onstage that various characters join in with at times, and paint. For reasons not entirely clear to me, characters spend a lot of time slapping themselves and others with brightly-colored paints.

Several of the lead characters really stand out. Alejandra Escalante as the Princess of France is remarkably funny in an understated way. I'm accustomed to seeing her in dramatic roles, so it's kind of a nice change. Stephen Michael Spencer is clever and clownish as Berowne, and Jennie Greenberry as Rosaline manages to keep a relatively low profile until she starts singing with the band, because she has such an awesome voice. And William Thomas Hodgson redeems himself from his role in Romeo as a perfectly fine, funny Dumain (adding further evidence that R&J was hamstrung by direction, not performance).

I left out some entire plot lines from the description above, mostly because they don't add much to the play. Indeed, I would have been fine had they removed the whole portion with Holofernes and Sir Nathaniel and the pageant of the Nine Worthies. That was the only part of the show that really dragged for me, and it doesn't really contribute to any of the other plot lines.

Bottom Line

This play truly is a lot of sound and fury, much ado, and all that. Really not much here.

And yet, it's really fun. It's amusing to listen, the presentation was fun to watch, colorful, musical, and entertaining. If I tried really hard, I might come up with some kind of lesson I supposedly learned, or some moral lesson that was ultimately upheld. But really, I just sat back and had a good time.

I liked it. I can't really explain that, but it was fun. And I suppose sometimes, that's enough.

"Manahatta" at Oregon Shakespeare Festival

OSF photo by Jenny Graham

Theaters seem to be rediscovering their Native American roots. For example, I've noticed that several theaters, particularly outdoor amphitheaters, have taken to explicitly acknowledging that the theaters stand on the grounds of particular native peoples. I don't know whether that same trend is reflected in the fact that the Oregon Shakespeare Festival has also featured plays with Native American themes, casts, and playwrights (including last season's Off the Rails), but I'd guess it's not a complete coincidence.

This season features the world premiere of Manahatta, playwright Mary Kathryn Nagle's attempt to bridge the past and present of the Lenape people, the original inhabitants of Manahatta, the "island of many hills," now known as Manhattan. The Lenape were "relocated" to Oklahoma.

The Play

Straddling these two worlds of the Lenape is Jane Snake, a brilliant young woman who has graduated MIT and wants to leave her native lands in Oklahoma to make it on Wall Street. But just as she is interviewing at an investment bank, her father is dying back home, so we immediately see the forces pulling her in both directions. Jane gets the job, but barely makes it home for the funeral.

Meanwhile we see some of the other conflicts within the family and community. Jane's mother has issues with holding the funeral in a Christian church. And it turns out she needs a lot of money to pay her husband's terminal medical bills, but a local banker who also happens to be an official in the church helps her to get a mortgage.

Mixed in with the modern views of life on the reservation and working on Wall Street are scenes of the Lenape back home in Manahatta, gathering shells and weaving wampum, and sometimes interacting with the Dutch settlers.

Throughout the play, Nagle shows the parallels between the Dutch exploitation of the Lenape and the predatory practices of the modern Wall Street firms, heightened by placing Jane's arrival just at the point where the high-flying investment banks are about to hit the financial crisis of the early 2000s. We get to see the Dutch colonial governor Peter Minuit and his extremely valuable tulip contrasted with Lehman Brothers CEO Dick Fuld and his mortgage-backed securities as the value of each commodity skyrockets and then plummets.

Similarly, we see a Dutch missionary trying to save and convert the natives, contrasted with the modern church elder/banker trying to help Jane's mother save her house by coercing her into taking out a mortgage that will surely balloon out of control, meanwhile leveraging her to start attending church, too.

Ultimately the argument of the play is economic, that the Europeans only care about making money, and the Native Americans get either tricked or forced into transactions they don't really understand. That argument has some credibility in the colonial period, but the case is a bit weaker in the present day.

The Production

Staged in OSF's Thomas theater, the small, black-box theater, the play is on a scale that works well in the setting. And the staging designed by Mariana Sanchez suits the space well. I like the way the Lenape people move back and forth in time, emphasizing the parallel stories, as the European characters inhabit corresponding roles in each timeline. For example, Jeffrey King is both Peter Minuit and Dick Fuld, and David Kelly both the Dutch missionary and the modern banker/church elder.

Tanis Parenteau is quite good as Jane, though it remains a bit unclear to me how her character ultimately gets as disconnected as it does from her home and culture. It's kind of an assumption, but I'd have liked to see more of the explanation of that.

The acting and movement are quite excellent throughout, and I found the Lenape portions quite compelling. And I guess as long as you are willing to just look at them as collateral damage of the juggernaut of capitalism, that's OK. I mean, that's certainly been the case, but unless we're shown some kind of alternate path, I'm not sure what the dramatic interest is. Is there some way a talented, motivated character such as Jane could have done something different to make the rapacious bankers less destructive to those around them? Could the scouts for Minuit and the Dutch colonists have stood up to the destruction they saw coming?

As a dramatization of descriptive history, it's well done and pretty interesting, but I wish the play were able to highlight turning points where things might have been different. Otherwise, it all seems rather bleak and defeatist. Maybe that's Nagle's point, that it was inevitable that peoples such as the Lenape would be swamped by the tide of surging European greed and self-interest, but as such it doesn't seem particularly compelling.

Bottom Line

It's a pretty good story, regardless, and interestingly presented in a high-quality production. I admit I learned some things about the Lenape people that I hadn't known before, but didn't get much insight into the other side of things. And maybe that's the lesson--I should just listen to the tale of the conquered people. We're all entitled to tell our stories. I just can't help thinking there is also a bigger story that might have fit in here, too.

Overall I thought it was fine. Not one of the tip-top productions we saw this year, but certainly worth seeing and enjoying.

"The Book of Will" at Oregon Shakespeare Festival

OSF photo by Jenny Graham

Now and then the Oregon Shakespeare Festival likes to throw in a play about Shakespeare, rather than by him. The first season I went there, I was blown away by Bill Cain's Equivocation, which was a wonderful, fictionalized look at how the government might have tried to enlist someone like Shakespeare as a propagandist after the Gunpowder Plot. This year, they're doing Lauren Gunderson's The Book of Will, a tale about how Shakespeare's friends and long-time company mates gathered his work into a folio publication after his death.

I really admire Gunderson's work. So do a lot of people, as she is currently the most-produced playwright (other than Shakespeare) in the US. I've seen quite a bit of her work, which makes sense, especially since she is based here in the Bay Area. Some of it is just terrific, though I have a sense that her prolific writing sometimes results in works that don't quite get finished before she moves on to the next project. Still, this one looked super promising.

The Play

It's three years since Shakespeare died, and several of the surviving members of the King's Men are reminiscing about Will and lament the horrible, bastardized versions of his work that are being staged. Richard Burbage, John Heminges, and Henry Condell meet up in Heminges' pub across from the theater (run by John's daughter, Alice). When Burbage dies suddenly, the others realize that he was the only one who knew many of Shakespeare's plays, and they might now be lost forever.

So begins a tale of how they decide to gather, edit, and publish the complete works of William Shakespeare into what we now know as the First Folio. It's quite a remarkable historical reconstruction, but it goes way, way beyond that. Deep down it's about the importance of memory and the written word, of passing down stories, of camaraderie, of family, and ultimately of the importance of theater to all of these.

First comes the realization that this sort of thing just isn't done--most work isn't published at all, and writers and theater companies don't own the publication rights. Whoever published the work first owned the publication rights. Second comes the realization that most of the original works no longer exist, and the people who knew them best (Shakespeare and Burbage) are dead.

So they embark on a quest of sorts, to recover prompt sheets, individual character sheets, and even the pirated quarto editions they so despise. It's kind of an impossible task, but they discover it's a labor of love on several levels, and we see the teamwork of the theater, the companionship and support of spouses and children, and even the appreciation of fans and printers.

I found the play remarkably touching, especially the first part of the second act where a lot of reality comes crashing down on John Heminges and he finds his respite and his support group. It's some really terrific writing.

Obviously, being historically based, the folio will eventually get produced, and we get to see the group take the first copy to Shakespeare's widow. And I've left out the bits with his mistress. And I haven't even mentioned the parts with Ben Jonson.

In short, there's a lot to this play, and a lot to like. I was quite taken with the whole package.

The Production

OSF has assembled something of an All-Star team to put this show together. We can start with director Christopher Liam Moore, a veteran actor and director at the festival who has directed some of my favorite shows over the years. Then they cast a group of experienced actors from the company: Kevin Kenerly as Burbage, Jeffrey King as John Heminges, and David Kelly as Henry Condell. Those guys average 22 years of experience in Ashland, so they form a great version of the King's Men. Add a strong supporting cast including Kate Mulligan, Kate Hurster, Catherine Castellanos, Cristofer Jean, and Daniel T. Parker, and all the key roles are covered with a lot of experience and chemistry.

The set itself is fairly simple, yet impressive. This is the Elizabethan theater, and the play really doesn't really require elaborate sets, so instead we have a really cool, swooping wood stage floor that extends somewhat over the edge of the actual stage, the curves up and continues upward, pretty much embodying the notion that "all the world's a stage." Then a few tables and chairs and such suggest the pub or a home or the print shop. It was nicely done.

But it's clear from the outset that, like the folio itself, this play is a labor of love for this cast and crew, and it reflects that throughout. Like the book project, you feel like you don't want the play to end, though you want to see the result.

Bottom Line

This might be the best metatheatrical production I've ever seen, if only because it doesn't require a play within a play, yet it's still totally about theater and plays and stories and the bands of artists who create them and keep them alive, and the audiences for whom they are so important. Truly, this is a play that gets all of those elements.

I could nitpick about a few things, but overall, I was delighted with this play and this production, and would happily have gone to see it again the next day or the next week if I could. If you love theater, this is a play to tug your heartstrings. And if you don't understand why people like me or the artists love the theater the way we do, this might give you some insight.

Truly, this was one of the transcendent experiences I have come to kind of expect from Ashland periodically. When I see them assemble an astounding group like this, I know it's going to be something special, and this doesn't disappoint.

I can't wait to see this play again, and I'm really disappointed that I don't know when or if I will.

"Sense and Sensibility" at Oregon Shakespeare Festival

OSF photo by Jenny Graham

 The Oregon Shakespeare Festival has been making a concerted effort to move away from their pure Shakespeare roots and into other niches as well. About a decade ago they started adding a Broadway-style musical every season, and they have commissioned a number of new works, including their American Revolutions series.



In addition, they have been presenting adaptations of a classic novels or popular stories, probably to appeal to a slightly different literary crowd. This year's adaptation is Kate Hamill's adaptation of Jane Austen's classic novel, Sense and Sensibility.

Although I'm not a huge fan, I do appreciate Austen's writing, and at least one member of our group is a genuine Austen aficionado, so there was no way we were going to skip this show.

The Play

The adaptation is a pretty straightforward version of Austen's novel, though obviously trimmed to fit into just under two-and-a-half hours. We start with a brief glimpse of the Dashwoods' comfortable middle-class life before the father dies suddenly, leaving his entire estate to his son from a previous marriage. The son's wife convinces him that he doesn't have to live up to his promise to take care of his three half-sisters, leaving them quite impoverished and with little to offer potential suitors except their charm and wit.

What follows is pretty typical Austen, with courtships and subtle (and not-so-subtle) flirtations, proposals, presumptions, and misunderstandings because everybody is so repressed about the whole thing. But things work out OK in the end, for the most part.

Although the play is an interesting look at 19th-century economic relations (and marriage was very much an economic association, in spite of the various infatuations and stylized Love that so preoccupy the girls), it's a little hard to take seriously in a modern era. There are certainly points that resonate with modern society, mostly about economic security and to a lesser extent, gender roles. But the plot devices are mostly about rather archaic social constructs that make little sense in the modern world.

The Production

After the previous evening's disappointment with Romeo and Juliet, it was refreshing to see a crisp, balanced production where the director (Hana Sharif) actually seems to have exerted some directorial control over the ensemble. Yes, K.T. Vogt and Brent Hinkley play their roles in a rather exaggerated, humorous vein, but they are clearly the comic relief and feel like appropriate diversions from the drudgery of the Dashwood family's difficulties. More importantly, they don't derail the main plot--those characters don't need credibility for later developments.

And most refreshing was to see last night's Juliet, Emily Ota, playing a very convincing Marianne Dashwood. As the middle sister, it's hard to pin down her exact age, but in this role she definitely came across as much younger than her Juliet. Here she was a plausible late-teen, early-20s or so, which is just fine. Admittedly, the age spread among the three girls seemed rather vast. Nancy Rodriguez is perhaps a bit old to play Elinor, the oldest daughter, but she's a good enough actor to pull it off, and Samantha Miller was quite strong and truly girlish as both youngest daughter Margaret. This solidified my conclusion that the problem with R&J was not with the actors, but with direction.

Rounding out the cast were a number of the truly dependable Ashland company regulars, such as Kate Mulligan as Mrs. Dashwood and Kevin Kenerly as Colonel Brandon and Michael Hume as Sir John. Assembled in a set (designed by Collette Pollard) that cleverly evoked the period while still providing enough versatility to portray a variety of actual settings, and costumed in the usual brilliant work of the OSF costumers (designed by Fabio Toblini), the cast pulled together in a solid, convincing rendition of Austen's story.

Bottom Line

I liked this more than I thought I would. As you'll have noted above, I don't see any really huge overriding significance to this particular story in today's environment, but it's still a solid tale, adapted and presented very effectively. It's not a spectacular story or show, but still an impressive presentation overall, which is what I expect at Ashland.

If anything, this presentation reassured me that the previous night's disappointment was an aberration, and that crazed actors have not taken control of the festival and ruined everything.

For the record, our Jan Austen fan liked the production very much. I liked it just fine, and would recommend it as a fine example of a stage adaptation of a period novel.

"Romeo and Juliet" at Oregon Shakespeare Festival

OSF photo by Jenny Graham

I really wanted to like this production. The last time OSF staged Romeo and Juliet, it was outstanding, with the title characters portrayed by a really talented couple we'd never seen before, but have since seen and appreciated often. And this time, they had a Bay Area actor I like cast as Romeo, so I had high hopes. Let's just say for now that they weren't realized.

The Play

Seriously? You want me to summarize Romeo and Juliet? Fine: two kids whose families are feuding fall madly in love, get secretly married, but get separated when he kills one of her relatives. Following bad advice from a clergyman, they both end up dead. Some other stuff happens, too. And there are some funny bits earlier, especially with the nurse.

The Production

I was very pleased when I saw that William Hodgson had been cast as Romeo. I've seen him in a number of productions here in the Bay Area, and he has impressed me. Emily Ota as Juliet is rather unknown to me, as I guess she'd been in a minor role in last season's Merry Wives. But in the performance we saw, there was no chemistry between them, and further, they were both acting way too old for the roles. Juliet is supposed to be just shy of her 14th birthday, and Romeo about 15-16. Neither one of them was convincing a that. Neither showed the giddiness of adolescents falling in love. Juliet looked more like Romeo's aunt than his girlfriend, which suggests both costuming and acting issues.

We subsequently saw both of the lead actors in other roles (Ota in Sense and Sensibility, Hodgson in Love's Labours Lost), and they were fine, really good, actually. Ota as Marianne Dashwood was a much more convincing naive teen than she was as Juliet. And Hodgson was the actor I know and expect in LLL. So I can only attribute the deficiency to poor direction on the part of director Damaso Rodriguez--a conclusion bolstered by other evidence as well.

For example, the Nurse (Robin Goodrin Nordli) is a well-known comical role in this rather slow-developing tragedy. And Nordli is a very experienced OSF cast member. But she played the almost exclusively for laughs, missing most of the necessary emotional connection with Juliet that makes the latter part of the play make sense. Similarly, Sara Bruner's comic rendition of Mercutio suggests that she watched last season's production of Shakespeare in Love and believed the part about the play actually being called "Mercutio." Because Bruner is also experienced and familiar, this over-the-top, broadly comic portrayal has to be intentional, but it really doesn't fit the play overall. And finally, Friar Laurence (Michael J. Hume) is played as a clueless, befuddled goofball. When he suddenly concocts an elaborate scheme to save the day (with tragic results), it makes no sense either that he comes up with it or that anyone would go along with it.

In short, after playing up the comic bits early, there is almost nothing to fall back on when things turn dark. We haven't established the emotional connections necessary to make the tragic turns work. There is no way to blame the actors for this. Nordli and Hume combined have a half century of experience just at Ashland. I know how they act and fit into a cast, and there's no way they'd go this far off the reservation. It had to be directed.

Bottom Line

I have no idea what director Rodriguez thought he was doing with this show. Making the start a big, broad comedy is fun for a while, but leaves no path available to the tragic end. And the whole driver of the plot is supposed to be the unquenchable teen love of the two main characters, but we just don't see or feel that at all.

So as hard as it is to fathom, this production manages to take what may be the best known tragic love story of all time and turn it into an incoherent mess. There are some "good" performances here by the actors, but most of it is wasted on this mess. I guess if you're looking for a quick comedy you could watch the first half and leave at the intermission. But if you're expecting a tear-jerking tragedy, you will be disappointed. Lots of dry eyes at the end of this show. It's a real waste of the time and talent put into the production.

Ashland rarely produces a poor play, but this is arguably the poorest I've seen in the decade I've been attending. Go see something else. R&J will be back in a few years, hopefully with better results.

"Henry V" at Oregon Shakespeare Festival

OSF photo by Jenny Graham

Time for the annual trek to Ashland for the Oregon Shakespeare Festival. I believe this marks the ninth or tenth year we've been doing this, and as with most years, we try to see as many of the shows as we can fit in. This year we had four days to see eight shows. Since only nine of the eventual eleven shows were running while we were there, eight is a pretty good score. (The only show we missed seeing that might have been possible was Oklahoma!, and no one in our group actually cared to see it.)

Day one of the trip is a Shakespeare double header: Henry V in the afternoon, followed by Romeo and Juliet in the evening. I was excited to see this Henry V, partly because it's just a tremendous play, full of wonderful language and great drama. But also because it represents the culmination of a three-year, four-play journey that began with a wonderful Richard II in 2016, followed by both parts of Henry IV last summer.

The Play

I don't really have to go into why this is such a great play. At the end of Henry IV, Prince Hal has ascended to the throne to become King Henry V, along the way symbolically dismissing his playboy past along with his companion, Falstaff. Now in Henry V, we see the new king settling into his position, ready to claim the throne of France as well.

Here we get to see the newly-serious king grappling with literal issues of life and death, war and peace. And we see him stepping into the role his father established before him, trying to unite the competing factions that divided England in civil war in the earlier plays.

Henry V is just an outstanding story for both the historical aspects and the stirring, patriotic overtones. There is no question why Olivier made a film of it during World War II, and Kenneth Brannagh made a version in the 80s. It's easy to get excited about England as we watch the charismatic king lead his troops to victory against tremendous odds.

There is good reason this is the best known and best loved of Shakespeare's history plays.

The Production

Always at the forefront of Henry V is the actor playing the eponymous king. Here, Daniel Jose Molina continues the role he began as Hal in the Henry IV plays last season. And that alone is reason enough to see this show. Molina impressed me immeasurably when he made his debut at OSF several years ago as Romeo, and has continued to blow me away, including his role as Elliot in Water By the Spoonful a couple of years back. Above all, he has impressed me with the thoughtful way he expresses Shakespeare's language, making it sound as if he's genuinely thinking and speaking, rather than reciting. It's quite remarkable and rare, and a treat to hear.

I should also mention that one of the strengths of this production is that it's once again presented in the close confines of the Thomas Theatre, OSF's small, black-box space. Even more than with the preceding plays in the series, Henry V benefits from the close exposure. At the same time, it makes it impossible to put throngs of actors in service of recreating giant battles, so director Rosa Joshi has carefully set it up so each combat and each death serves as a synecdoche, such as when the unnamed Boy (formerly Falstaff's page) is killed, representing the massacre of all the boys by the French.

Some of the techniques used to evidence the scope of the bloodshed are a little heavy-handed, but overall the approach is excellent.

Similarly, because of the small cast, the ensemble sometimes has to switch quickly from being the French army to the English, and designer Sarah Ryung Clement's costumes switch brilliantly back and forth.

Finally, my Welsh grandmother wouldn't forgive me if I didn't call out Rex Young's excellent portrayal of Captain Fluellen and his masterful besting of his English counterpart, Gower, complete with a very large leek. Again, this is enough to justify seeing the entire production.

Bottom Line

A lot of history passes between the start of Richard II and the end of Henry V, and despite being designed and directed by different crews, the continuity of key actors really helped with the flow. I'm slightly disappointed that Ashland isn't carrying on with Henry VI next season, because I'm ready for more history now, but I also realize that this is a pretty good place to break the progression, and the Henry VI plays aren't nearly as popular as the others.

Still, I have to applaud the overall three-year effort to present the "Henriad" with such a degree of continuity. Although I didn't always care for the particular styles of the productions (particularly with some of Henry IV), I thought the acting and direction were excellent, and the larger story lines easy to follow. That's no small feat with Shakespeare's histories. The last time I'd seen the Henriad was in the outdoor Elizabethan theater, which has its own sort of majesty. This setting makes for much more personal interpretations of the characters and the plays.

So, all in all, a wonderful and satisfying conclusion to this odyssey. It's a good sign when seeing that many plays makes you want to see some more!

"Soft Power" at Curran Theatre

Curran Theatre production photo by Craig Schwartz Photography

The renovated Curran Theatre continues to attract interesting shows since it broke off from the SHN company that brings most of the touring Broadway shows to San Francisco. You never quite know what you're going to get. Most recently, it was a new play by writer David Henry Hwang and composer Jeanine Tesori called Soft Power. This one is a little hard to describe because it is so unusual.

Not only has Hwang written himself into the play as a character, but he and Tesori have inserted a musical into the middle of the play. That's pretty cool, but even more so because of how clever and subversive the whole thing is. But I get ahead of myself....

The Play

We start with a scene that seems like something out of Hwang's earlier play, Chinglish, which was about business people having problems communicating across American and Chinese cultures. But in this case, the character "DHH" is an American playwright pitching a script to a Chinese producer, Xue Xing, whose company is trying to break into the US market. The exec wants something like "Sex in the City," but where the city is Shanghai and the content is Chinese, not just in language, but culturally. There ensues a discussion of what it means to be Chinese, both as a person and as a writer, versus what it means in the U.S.

Then we segue into attending a rally for presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, and the Chinese exec has a chance encounter with the candidate that may or may not have changed the course of history, depending on how you look at it. We then fast-forward into the future, where China is the dominant world power, and the story of the exec meeting the candidate has been memorialized in a musical, sort of a reverse "The King & I," and the portrayal is outstanding. The reverse view of how another culture might look at stepping into a poorly-understood American culture of the past is both hilarious and unsettling. Indeed, Hwang subverts us and keeps doing so throughout.

Later we get Chinese academics discussing the story on a TV talk program, which is likewise both funny and disturbing, if a little long-winded.

There's more, but I don't want to give you everything. Suffice it to say the show is both clever and provocative, entirely unlike anything you'll see on stage these days, especially in a musical. I found the whole show pretty riveting, and kind of wished I'd had more chance to mull it over before the next steamroller ran through.

The Production

The show had a rather short stay at the Curran after its premiere in Los Angeles. I imagine it's heading to Broadway eventually, given the star power of the creative team and the degree of polish applied to this production. Tony Award winners Hwang and Tesori team with director Leigh Silverman, herself a Tony nominee and frequent collaborator with Hwang, to make the complex story and staging work extremely effectively.

Probably the key to the performances is Conrad Ricamora as Xing. Whether speaking or singing, he manages to make himself the center of attention, which is quite a feat given all the other stuff going on. Hillary Clinton (Alyse Alan Louis) is also a fun role, not trying to imitate the actual candidate, but capturing enough of her to make the role both credible and funny. Perhaps the most fun aspect is that the vast majority of the cast is Asian or Asian American, so when we see the Chinese staging of the imagined Old West of the early 21st century, it's Asian faces playing redneck Americans to brilliant effect. The characterizations of "Bobby Bob" and "Randy Ray" and (of course) "Tony Manero" are really fun. A song about the American love of guns is almost too accurate to be funny, but it is both.

I wish I'd been able to see the show twice, because I know there were a lot of nuances I missed, though I caught a lot of the amusing bits.

Bottom Line

I suspect there will be some tweaking going on before this show hits Broadway (assuming that's where it's headed), but what's there already is really solid. The show is clever and creative, but entirely approachable and understandable. It manages to be both fun and interesting while all the while subverting your expectations both theatrically and culturally.

In short, this is one of the most creative and culturally important shows I've seen in a long time, perhaps since Hamilton.

If this taste is indeed just to whet our palates for a later production, I will definitely be ready and waiting for another helping.

"Quixote Nuevo" at Cal Shakes

Cal Shakes production photo by Kevin Berne

Continuing a month of June that contained so many plays that I'm having to wait until July to write about it all, here comes Cal Shakes with the world premiere of Quixote Nuevo by Octavio Solis. Somewhere in the fine print in the program is an indication that this is related to an earlier take on Don Quixote that premiered at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival in 2009, which I also saw (my first ever show in Ashland!). But I don't remember it very well. I wasn't blogging about theater back then, but I did find some notes on a more general blog. Definitely a different show!

The Play

Unlike the show in Ashland a decade ago, this is not a telling of Cervantes' Don Quixote, but rather a retelling of a similar story set in modern Texas. La Plancha, Texas, to be precise. So our Quixote is an aging, Latino Texan who seems to be losing a lot of his mind. His family is trying to take care of him, despite very limited resources. And lately, as they are about to move him into a home, he's having visions brought to him by a calaca, a skeleton or spirit of the dead. He begins to see himself as the legendary knight Don Quixote, and recruits a local to be his squire, Sancho, as he searches for his lost love across the border, Dulcinea.

It's really quite a sweet story, as we watch our Quixote drift in and out of lucidity, and we sometimes see the world as he's imagining it, sometimes as those around him see it. Moving back and forth over that line is an effective tool, and Solis handles it well.

Particularly touching is the way so many people try to help our errant knight, realizing he's old and not in his right mind, and trying to thwart those who would take advantage of him.

The Production

This show continues a trend of impressive productions at Cal Shakes, though I have to say the amphitheater wasn't full, and not nearly as full as I've been used to seeing. I hope that doesn't reflect a drop in their attendance overall, because I think the quality of their shows has been trending upward the last couple of years under new Artistic Director Eric Ting.

I will admit this show set off one of my alarms, when I saw they'd imported a guest star who is best known for his TV work. Emilio Delgado plays our aging Quixote, but he's best known for a 44-year run as Luis on "Sesame Street". That's not exactly an obvious set-up to a leading stage role. But I was pleasantly surprised. Delgado handled the complex role with aplomb, managing to be charming and vulnerable and dashing and humble and all the characteristics needed for both his real self and his imagined knight.

I thought the acting was quite good throughout, with Juan Amador particularly effective as the supportive Sancho and Hugo Carbajal playing the difficult role of Papa Calacas, leading our Quixote ever farther astray. Sol Castillo as a very worldly Padre Perez, Amy Lizardo as Juana, and Gianna DiGregorio Rivera as Antonia also stood out for me.

The set design by Annie Smart was fine, though nothing particularly spectacular, but I thought the props and costumes (by Ulises Alcala) were particularly effective and often comical.

All in all, I thought it was a touching and smooth production, which suits both the Quixote story and the path of our aging protagonist. Director KJ Sanchez kept things moving and coherent, which is often a challenge with new works.

Bottom Line

Another solid and enjoyable production by Cal Shakes. I appreciate their efforts to tell stories beyond their core set of Shakespeare and American classics, reaching out for good stories from different cultures. I truly hope that was not responsible for the number of empty seats around the theater, because this was a good show that deserves to be seen.

Solis has managed to take the familiar tropes of the Don Quixote story and turn it into something nuevo, touching the modern issues of aging and the contemporary issues of the U.S.-Mexican border with the humor and charm of Cervantes' characters. For me, this was a much more approachable version of Don Quixote than the distantly-remembered version I saw at Ashland almost a decade ago.

Unfortunately, this seemed to be a really short run, and we saw it in its last week, so it's now gone. But you should keep an eye open for this show and for the work of Octavio Solis. Seeing what he's done with the Quixote story over time suggests to me that he's an impressive and talented writer, and I'd like to see more of his work.

"Mamma Mia" at The Mountain Play

For over a century, there have been summer plays outdoors on Mount Tamalpais in Marin County. I have been twice now, first in 1994 to see Fiddler on the Roof with some friends, and now this year, to see Mamma Mia.

The Mountain Play is kind of an anomaly among local theater endeavors. It's basically community theater, but because it has such a large venue (3,750 seats in a stone amphitheater) and remote location near the top of the mountain, it attracts a huge number of people and some pretty talented artists, despite the relatively small number of performances (I think there were only five this year).

But musical theater is pretty popular, as is sitting in the sun on a warm summer day in Marin. So, there we were.

The Play

Where to start with this one? Mamma Mia certainly wasn't the first jukebox musical, but when it hit the stage in London in 1999, it made such a splash that it spawned a whole set of imitators.

From my perspective, what sets this show apart is that it actually has a goofy but reasonably coherent plot combined with the fact that the songs were barely altered to fit that plot. Most jukebox musicals either don't try to tell a story (or tell a history of the artist) or have to rework the lyrics of songs to fit together in a story (as I noted in my recent post on Escape to Margaritaville).

But this is a case where someone took a bunch of songs by ABBA and arranged them to fit a cute little story that totally suits the genre of the modern musical, but without rewriting them except for tweaking a word or phrase here or there. In part I suppose this might mostly reflect the rather nebulous content of ABBA songs, but on the whole I have to say the concept works exceptionally well.

So you have a bunch of pop tunes tied around a rather unique confused-identity mix-up leading into a wedding on a Greek island, where the proprietor of the taverna on the island just happens to have been the lead singer of a popular girl singing group Back in the Day. Of course.

As noted, it's silly, but it's fun, and since ABBA is so well known and singable, one finds oneself humming and singing along much of the time, and that's a big part of the fun. The absurdity of the premise is just all part of the fun, and totally forgivable because, hey, ABBA tunes!

The Production

As a friend of mine says, you never know what to expect with community theater, and runs the full range from awful to quite good. In the case of the Mountain Play, they have the advantage of a rather large budget to go with their large amphitheater, so it is kind of a standing tradition for people to go see it.

That said, I was pleasantly surprised with the quality of this production. They were a little too enamored of their fancy, movable set pieces, and not all the voices were as strong as they ought to be, and they had a few technical difficulties with microphones. But that happens. On the other hand, most of the lead actors were at least passably talented, all could sing, and the choreography and dancing were surprisingly solid. I was particularly taken with a number where most of the ensemble danced onstage wearing colorful snorkeling vests, masks, snorkels, and fins, and proceeded to do an entire production number. In fins. Not easy. Totally fun.

I should mention that the stage in the amphitheater is quite large (because the amphitheater itself is quite broad). That's great for things like big dance numbers, but most of the action between the songs involves relatively small groups of people talking--often just a couple, maybe three. On an outdoor stage in broad daylight, it's hard to focus audience attention, and there were definitely times when I struggled to figure out where the action was.

But that's a detail. The play was quite well done.

Bottom Line

If they maintain this kind of quality, I would heartily recommend going in future years. There are some other considerations, however.

I mentioned the remote location. It can take a long time for the theater to clear, people to get back to their cars, and the traffic to filter down the windy, mountain roads back into town. There are shuttle buses that ease some of that, but you also have to figure out where to go and get there. A nice option for those who are capable is to walk down (or even up!) using the Dipsea trail. It's a lovely walk down (I did it the previous time I went) as long as you get back to civilization before it gets too dark.

Also, most of the amphitheater is open "festival" seating, so people arrive really early, reserve spaces, and then go off to enjoy the mountain and/or the food and crafts (and/or a picnic) before the show. So if you show up close to start time, you will be way off to the side in a corner, and the sightlines might involve trees and such.

We happened to go for the last performance of the season, which fell on Father's Day, so the place was completely packed. We weren't able to go early, so our seats were less than stellar.

But even given that, it was a lot of fun, and I still find myself humming ABBA tunes, several weeks later.

I have no idea what play they will do next year, but it would definitely be worth checking out, if only for a fun afternoon on the mountain in the sun.