"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.

"Angels in America" at Berkeley Rep

Berkeley Rep photo by Kevin Berne

I missed this the first time around. Tony Kushner's Angels in America: A Gay Fantasia on National Themes was one of the defining theatrical events of the late 20th century, and I didn't see it. Didn't really know about it until it was already gone. And in many ways that's apt, because I also managed to miss a lot of the events that are the subject of the plays because I didn't live in the Bay Area (or New York) in the late 1980s and early 1990s. The one brief hiatus I took from living in the Bay Area, and that was it. So I can't relate to a lot of this story of the early days of the AIDS epidemic the way so many of my friends and family do.

All that said, Berkeley Rep's revival of this epic story is incredible, and definitely qualifies as a "must see" event.

The Play(s)

Angels in America is such a big story, it comes in two parts, called Millennium Approaches (Part I) and Perestroika (Part 2). For the most part I will just refer to the whole thing as Angels in America, unless I need to make a specific point about one part or the other.

I'm not going to try to summarize the more than seven-and-a-half hours of drama that make up this show. It is an epic story of the early days of the AIDS crisis, from several key perspectives. The main characters are

• a gay couple, Prior and Louis
• a closeted Mormon law clerk, Joe, and his wife, Harper
• Belize, an African American nurse who is friends with Prior and Louis
• Roy Cohn, who is Joe's mentor
• Joe's mother, Hannah
• The Angel

There are plenty of other supporting parts, played by these same actors, but that's the bulk of the cast.

It's quite a remarkable recreation of the late 1980s, with lots of echoes that connect with issues today.

The Production

It wouldn't be an overstatement to call it spellbinding. Neither of the parts of the play, over three-and-a-half hours each, feels long, and the break between is a refreshing chance to catch one's breath and get ready for more.

Stephen Spinella as Cohn is remarkable, revealing both the charismatic and the horrifying in his portrayal of a real-life character. The fact that Spinella originated the role of Prior in the premiere of Angels long ago is all the more fascinating, suggesting we rethink how we slot our selves and others into categories of good and evil, among other things.

The production itself is largely stripped-down, which makes for smooth transitions between scenes and also keeps the focus on the people more than the setting. The actual angel felt a bit awkward in costuming, but I suspect that was a conscious nod to the original staging (which I didn't see) as well as comporting with the portrayal of the angels in general later on (trying not to spoil things here!).

Suffice it to say that the staging manages to suggest the proper time period without explicitly recreating it, which works fine.

The acting was mostly excellent, though I found both Joe (Danny Binstock) and Harper (Bethany Jillard) a bit flat. Caldwell Tidicue as Belize was terrific, though I gather audience members either farther away or sometimes behind him had some trouble picking up his voice. But the characterization of Belize felt spot-on. And Carmen Roman as Hannah (and many smaller roles) was quite striking.

Much has been written of the reunion of director Tony Taccone with Kushner, since they created the original production at Eureka Theatre. Much has changed over those years, but Taccone clearly still has a clear eye for what this show is supposed to be, and the production reflects that.

Bottom Line

The fact that productions of this show are still selling out in London and New York suggests there is a resonance in the story with current events, but it will always have a special place in the Bay Area, and having a local production makes good sense.

The show runs a bit more, through July 22nd, and it's well worth seeing if you have the opportunity. Sorry it took me so long to finish writing this up--I've been seriously testing the boundaries of "too much theater" as well as trying to live the rest of my life. But Angels in America remains an iconic piece of American theater, and is worth the investment of time to see it.