"Birds of a Kind" at Stratford Festival

Stratford Festival production photo by David Hou

For the last show of this year's visit to Stratford, we caught another premiere, Birds of a Kind, by Wajdi Mouawad. This was the English-language premiere of the work, but more about that later.

The Play

I wasn't sure what to make of this play when we were deciding which shows to see. My wife and I both kept calling it "Birds of a Feather", which is how "La Cage Au Folles" was sometimes translated into English, and that is totally not what this play is about (though ironically, it was originally written and produced in French). The show itself had a fairly interesting and long journey into production, but it all seems to fit.

So what is it? This is a play about identity and belonging, about prejudices and karma. We start with the rather odd meeting of a couple of college students: she (Wahida) an Arab-American, but very much American, he (Eitan) an Israeli-American Jew who is somewhere on the autism spectrum. They manage to overcome the awkwardness of the meeting and fall in love.

Things start to fly apart at a family Passover seder where Wahida is to meet Eitan's family. It does not go well. We start seeing the layers of experience and prejudice that underlie the attitudes of Eitan's family members. His parents live in Germany, though the father grew up in Israel. The grandparents are estranged for (initially) unexplained reasons.

None of this description is going to do justice to the play. It's deep and complex, and the characters are rich and interesting, and the language bounces among English, Hebrew, German, and occasionally Arabic and bits of Yiddish. Projected supertitles appear during the non-English parts, and it works well. But the key is noting how various characters slip in and out of languages as they change topics and/or feel the need to exclude others from the conversation.

Eventually all the questions are answered fairly well. Some of it I found fairly predictable, but nonthing about it was trite or simple, and there are layers of the plot and story that we're still talking about almost a week later. This is a good and interesting play.

The Production

Super complex. I believe all the actors in the play had to speak in at least two, and often three, languages. That's fairly common in Canada, which famously has two official languages. But finding that many fluent Hebrew and Arabic speakers might be tough. Indeed, talking with people around the Festival, we heard stories of some of the actors struggling a bit to learn such large parts in unfamiliar tongues. But to our ears, it turned out pretty convincingly, though at least one of the actors seemed to struggle a little with the Hebrew.

The acting was unsurprisingly strong, this being Stratford. Jakob Eiman as Eitan and Baraka Rahmani as Wahida were a strong core, and Sarah Orenstein as Norah and Alon Nashman as David were quite powerful, though in very different ways. David is loud and angry and opinionated; Norah is reticent and rather mournful. But both project great power on stage. This was a great use of the close quarters of the Studio Theatre, where every seat feels right on top of the stage.

But what really comes through is the stories. The refugees of various sorts adjusting and surviving in unfamiliar lands, the vows never to return to places that must be broken, the stories one tells oneself to get through a day, a year, a lifetime. And ultimately, the importance people put on belonging to a group, and how that relates to race, to genetics, to family, and to acceptance or the lack thereof.

Bottom Line

It's a really powerful story, told in a very challenging way. It's not always pleasant, and it's not about struggling to a happy-ever-after ending. But it feels very real, in a difficult and searching way. A lot gets crammed into a small space and condensed time, but that's the beauty of theater.

The show runs in Stratford through October 13. This one would justify a trip to Canada--it's really that good.

"The Front Page" at Stratford Festival

Stratford Festival ensemble production photo by Emily Cooper

This one was a tough call. The Front Page by Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur is a classic of the American stage. Some even think it's one of the two or three most exemplary American plays. So with the Stratford Festival staging Michael Healey's adaptation of this show, I really wanted to see it. Not to mention that it would be my chance to finally see a show in the Festival Theatre. On the other hand, during our visit it was opposite a new and interesting sounding new play (Mother's Daughter by Kate Hennig). So we split up and I went to see The Front Page while the rest of the family went to see Mother's Daughter.

Adding to the dilemma: the morning before these two competing matinees, we attended a panel discussion called "Tudormania", about the ongoing interest in the Tudor family of British royalty. A couple of academics and playwright Hennig made a good bridge between the previous night's Henry VIII and Mother's Daughter, which focuses on Queen Mary, the bridge between Henry VIII and Elizabeth I. Countering that is that the previous night while having a nightcap at the pub and trying out our new Trivial Pursuit: The Shakespeare Edition at the bar, we met one of the company members who is in the cast of The Front Page. Moot point, I guess, since I already had a ticket, but definitely added incentive to go see my new friend's play, rather than the play of the writer I briefly met after the panel discussion.

Short answer, Stratford is just a cool place where you can meet interesting theater people.

The Play

So, anyway, the play I did see. It's set in the press room of the Chicago criminal court building, where a group of beat writers are awaiting the execution of a controversial convicted murderer. Writers Hecht and MacArthur were both reporters themselves, so it's kind of a fun insight into the lives of a group who were not highly regarded. It's also a view into the corrupt local government that Chicago was so famous for, particularly during Prohibition. This adaptation also adds some elements of gender (more female roles, with more lines and more agency) and plays up the racial elements more, too.

It's pretty amazing to hear elected officials from 1928 (in this case, the sheriff and the mayor) attacking the free press and accusing them of (literally) "fake news"--there truly is nothing new under the sun. In fact, a lot of the issues raised in the play could easily come out of today's headlines. We have elected officials monkeying with the timing of an execution (and indeed, with whether to execute at all) as leverage for an upcoming election, pandering to specific elements of the electorate. And we have various of the reporters reporting the story with varying levels of, shall we say, creativity.

One of the more pointed sections of the dialogue comes when Wilson (E.B. Smith), the only African American writer in the gang, discusses why he can't afford to write anything that isn't scrupulously sourced and verified, since there are elements in town who would love to shut down both him and his black-run paper for any excuse. Similarly, when the sheriff is handing out tickets to the execution, he gives a pair to each of the writers, but not to Wilson, who has to go a little extra to get his.

As the play progresses and the plot devolves, there are a number of little humorous twists in the plot, all adding up to a developing farce, as we finally get an escaped fugitive hiding out in the press room while one of the writers , Hildy (Ben Carlson), aided by his boss, Mrs. Burns (Maev Beaty), tries to secure an exclusive story without the others even knowing the fugitive is there. It's silly, yet somehow believable that a paper would go to such lengths to score a scoop.

For all the hijinks, there are a lot of meaningful bits and threads running through the play--it is much more than it appears on the surface. I'm not clear that it really qualifies as one of the truly great American plays, but it's not a mere screwball comedy, either.

The Production

By now it probably goes without my saying that the quality of the productions at Stratford is pretty consistently amazing. One of the things this show takes advantage of is the large repertory company. Although there are a good dozen meaty roles in the play, there are also a number of small parts. Rather than doubling or tripling the casting, Stratford can pull actors with big roles in other shows and assign them to small roles. For example, the minor but amusing role of the gangster Diamond Louis is played by Michael Blake, who on a different day will play the title role in Othello.

I should comment on the Festival Theatre, of course. I had taken the backstage tour of it last year, so I'd been inside (and backstage...), but this was my first time seeing a show. It's quite a large house, seating well over 2,000 people, though it wasn't close to sold out for this Wednesday matinee. But the design is wonderful. Built to mimic the original festival tent from the 1950s, the audience nearly surrounds a large, three-quarter thrust stage (i.e. there are people on three sides of the stage). That provides a much more visually rich, intimate experience, even in such a large space. It's a big stage, but it works really well for a show like this, and I know they use it for a lot of their big musicals now, too. As a theater, I have to say I like it better than the Avon Theatre, where we saw Little Shop the previous afternoon, which has a more traditional proscenium setup. And the Studio Theatre is a wonderful little black box with very steeply-raked seats on three sides, so it is also three-quarter thrust, just on a much smaller scale. Next year they will open a new theater, so there will be four--wow!

The combination of the theater and the terrific cast makes the more-than-three hour run time bearable (with two intervals), and director Graham Abbey keeps the pace lively without being too manic (until the farce comes to a head, of course) and the set design by Lorenzo Savoini is really evocative of a government office building of the period.

Bottom Line

I really enjoyed the show. For what it's worth, the rest of the family also enjoyed Mother's Daughter, so we now have a copy of the script so I can read it. As noted earlier, I don't know that this play is really up near the top of the American stage canon, but it holds up remarkably well for a modern audience, at least with the adaptations in this version.

And I'm pretty much coming to the conclusion that any show at the Stratford Festival is going to be worth seeing, between the production values and the choice of scripts. I heard remarkable things, for example, about last season's production of To Kill a Mockingbird, which apparently was able to plumb some of the history of American racism in ways that I've never seen a U.S. production achieve. I'm sorry I missed that one.

So it was fun to see this Canadian interpretation of a different American classic. It's scheduled to run through October 25th, in case you find yourself in Stratford.

"Henry VIII" at Stratford Festival

Stratford Festival production photo by Emily Cooper

Sometimes it feels like I've seen all the Shakespeare plays (though there are still about a handful I have neither seen nor read), but there are quite a few that I have seen rarely, or once. I have great memories of seeing Henry VIII at Ashland on my first trip there, about ten years ago. It was wonderfully done, and riveting in the outdoor Elizabethan theater. So given the choice of seeing it in Stratford this week or joining the rest of the family to see Billy Elliot, I chose Shakespeare.

The Play

My strong memory was that although King Henry VIII provides the context for the play, it was largely a play about Cardinal Wolsey and Katherine of Aragon. And that is really the case, at least for most of the play. The political machinations of Wolsey (Rob Beattie) do occupy much of the bulk of the play, and they largely come at the expense of Katherine (Irene Poole). I found the play engaging and the politics fascinating, though I gather my reaction is somewhat atypical. I was looking at a cute poster they sell in the Festival shop, depicting a flow chart for determining which Shakespeare play to watch, and Henry VIII is indicated for those who want to take a nap.

The play is talky--there isn't a lot of action. But in the intimacy of the Studio Theatre it's all right there in front of you, and even from my position in the front corner where I was often behind the actors, there was always a lot to see, and the actors mostly play the thrust stage almost as if they were in the round, so I didn't feel like I was missing much.

I will say toward the end, after the rather unremarkable transition from Katherine to Anne Boleyn and the subsequent birth of Elizabeth, the play gets a bit mawkish in foreshadowing the amazing impact she will have on the nation. With this play coming out relatively soon after the death of Elizabeth, it's understandable that there is some necessary hagiography, but it really kind of diminishes the impact of Henry as a historical figure if he's just the necessary forebear of the future Queen Elizabeth I.

The Production

This is a sort of play where the Stratford Festival really excels. Although there are not a lot of big roles, there are a lot of actors required, and the repertory company has plenty. Plus, they have a huge storehouse of period costumes, so even though the little theater doesn't accommodate a lot of set pieces, the costuming is lush and varied, and the lighting makes it all quite vivid.

King Henry himself (Jonathan Goad) is good, though hardly the major force one expects from other depictions of that ruler. This Henry seems quite willing to let others run rather amok and only sort it out when he must--much more passive than I would expect. On the other hand, if Henry is diminished by his lack of vigor, it gives more room for lesser characters to shine a bit. Tim Campbell's brief early stint as the Duke of Buckingham is one such, and Stephen Russell as the Lord Chamberlain is another.

But really, as usual, the cast and designs are just solid throughout. It's really a joy to see such vibrant, detailed renderings of Shakespeare's plays.

Bottom Line

Maybe I'm weird, but I really liked this play. And judging from the enthusiastic response from the full house, I'm not the only one.

I find this history play rather more approachable than most (perhaps because I'm not particularly steeped in British history myself), and quite enjoy the politics and such. I'm happy I got to see it again. The play runs through at least mid-October, and is well worth seeing if you're at the festival.

"Little Shop of Horrors" at Stratford Festival

Stratford Festival production photo by Chris Young

We're making a quick stop at the Stratford Festival this year on our way to New York. Only two days here, but two plays each day. First up is a musical for everybody: Little Shop of Horrors. I've seen this on stage once before, and also enjoyed the musical version of the movie, so really, what could be bad?

The Play

I think this story is pretty well known. On Skid Row in New York City there is a flower shop run by Mr. Mushnik. He has two employees, Seymour (an orphan who Mushnik raised from childhood) and Audrey, the battered girlfriend of a sadistic dentist. Business is bad on Skid Row, and so is life. Just as Mushnik is about to give up and shutter the business, Seymour puts one of the exotic plants he raises as a hobby in the window. Suddenly, everything changes, seemingly for the better, but of course there is a price to pay.

As musicals go, the songs are mostly pretty good (written by the team of Howard Ashman and Alan Menken, who combined to write a lot of successful Disney movie scores). But this is also an adaptation of a Roger Corman "B" movie from 1960, so it's a bit dark. All in all, that blends pretty well. Some of it is a bit dated, but like most older movies about even older periods, you have to look at the intentions of the time as well as the sensibilities of the present. For the most part, it works well.

The Production

As with every production I've seen at Stratford over the last two years, this one is excellently done. Great acting, design, and direction. This is a particularly tricky show to produce, requiring as it does some major mechanical puppetry, but it seemed to work pretty flawlessly. The lead actors all have strong voices, and the trio of singers who act as sort of a Greek chorus were really very good.

I didn't especially love the set design, which puts Mushnik's flower shop in a circle in the middle of the stage, but I also realize that all the mechanics required to handle the exotic plants limit what one can do. The projections in the background were fun and interesting.

Bottom Line

There's not a lot to say about this show. It's fun, and the production is top quality. The crowd loved it, and the run has been extended well into November. This is the kind of thing I've come to expect at Stratford.

"Kill Move Paradise" at Shotgun Players

Shotgun Players production photo by Robbie Sweeny

One of the things I have missed about blogging is getting to write about my "home" theater, the Shotgun Players, where I am still a member of the board. And I've been looking forward to Shotgun's current production of James Ijames's Kill Move Paradise ever since last season, when they produced Ijames's play White and did Kill Move Paradise as a companion staged reading.

Unfortunately, that was right around the time my blog and I fell off the edge of the universe, so we don't have a way to reflect my feelings then versus now. Oops! Suffice it to say that White was a spectacular, if somewhat flawed, investigation of privilege and cultural appropriation as manifested in race and gender and all sorts of other dimensions of society. I'm glad Shotgun decided to bring this fully-staged production to life this year, as it does much more justice to the material than the reading could.

The Play

We start with a very plain, empty room that looks like a catch basin for all the sewers of the universe, but very clean, almost sterile. Then one by one a series of young African American men arrive and have to come to grips with how they got there and why. It's not too much of a spoiler to say this place is a kind of limbo, and each of the men has arrived because of being killed for no good reason.

As each one begins to fathom his fate, he also begins to note the fourth wall, behind which is an audience, and we all become part of the production, to one degree or another. At some level each member of the audience gets to decide how much to interact, which is an interesting part of the play.

So the play explores both the rash of premature, violent deaths of young black men and the relationship of those men to the rest of society: those of us who observe, but might not act. There is also quite a wonderful element of the play that explores how these men assist each new arrival, as each goes through various stages of awareness ad grieving.

And in the background is an old computer printer that occasionally burps out a few more entries to an ever-growing list: a roster of these men that the first character, Isa, reads aloud to great effect.

All in all it's a rather simple story, but profound and moving.

The Production

The first thing I thought of when I saw a picture of the set for this play was how completely it had transformed the Ashby Stage's performance space. It's almost entirely unrecognizable: starkly white, smoothly curved, and almost unornamented. So, big kudos to set designer Celeste Martore for capturing the necessary aspect of the inescapable sump of the universe! Stephanie Johnson's lighting makes a lot of mood changes possible within the simple space, along with Theodore J.H. Hulsker's video effects and Elton Bradman's sound design (assisted by Dani Chaparro). This plain, white space contains much more than it initially seems.

And as each actor enters the space in turn, we get treated to four different iterations of a young man having to adjust to the realization of where he is and why, with the emotional upheavals that accompany that. And each in turn must also deal with the fact of being observed, causing the audience to think about how they are affecting the actors, the play, and the characters. It's quite fascinating, often subtle, and both disturbing and delightful to watch.

In their turns, Isa (Edward Ewell), Grif (Lenard Jackson), Daz (Tre'Vonne Bell), and Tiny (Dwayne Clay) captivate us in different ways. Each brings something unique to his experience and ours. I can't go into it much without ruining it, so I'll just say that it is remarkably moving and thought-provoking to watch what all of them, individually and collectively, go through in the course of a relatively short show. Director Darryl V. Jones does a terrific job of making sure we see all four of the characters as fully-differentiated individual, yet inextricably bound together by something they cannot change.

Bottom Line

This is not a show that's going to leave you jumping for joy. But it is deeply affecting. I found it has stuck with me now for days (despite my lack of writing about it!). The performances are difficult yet wonderful, and the show overall is well worth seeing. Bring your friends and talk it over, either in the post-show discussion (after every performance) or after you leave. But you will have things to discuss.

The show has been extended to August 11th, so you still have three weekends to see it. And you should. Bring friends. You won't regret it.

"The Year of Magical Thinking" at Aurora Theatre Company

Stacy Ross in "The Year of Magical Thinking"; Aurora Theatre photo by David Allen

Now and then I think about the perfect theater experience. What would it be like if someone created a play just for me? It would probably be a small play, intimate, using actors and a director I really like, and of course a terrific writer.

Aurora might have come pretty close to that ideal with this production of Joan Didion's play The Year of Magical Thinking, adapted from her terrific book of the same title. I've been a huge fan of Didion's writing for years, so I wanted to see the play, and then I saw that they had cast Stacy Ross in the only role, and hired Nancy Carlin to direct it in Aurora's little 3/4 thrust stage theater. This was going to be something.

The Play

There is only one actor. That actor plays Joan Didion, because The Year of Magical Thinking is an autobiographical work that commences with the death of Didion's husband, John Gregory Dunne, with whom she has collaborated on a lot of work over the years. His sudden, unexpected demise while sitting at their kitchen table comes on the heels of a daily visit to their daughter, who was at the time in an induced coma at a local hospital.

What ensues is a remarkable chronicle of the next year or so, as Didion struggles to cope with the reality of a funeral and other aspects of her daily existence, while at the same time strongly believing, magically, that her husband is not really dead, and is coming back if only she does the right things.

The book is amazing, and well worth reading, and the play is an excellent condensation and encapsulation of enough of it to give a feel for the dissonance going through Didion's head and heart. The matter-of-fact way that Didion confronts what is for her a terribly uncharacteristic flight into fantasy underscores how an emotional shock can drive someone into wholly unrecognizable behavior. And yet at another level, she kept up a facade of normality, and continued to keep her journals from which she was able to extract the material for the book.

And then for those familiar with the book, the play continues on a bit, with a few more little twists that one wouldn't expect if this were just a straight rendering of the book's story on stage. I have always found Didion's writing absorbing and compelling, and though this work is a particularly difficult subject matter, that makes it all the more interesting on some levels.

I thought the writing and the adaptation were excellent.

The Production

As you can see from the photo at the top, it's a pretty simple set that somewhat dwarfs the single actor, chair, and side table. There is a definite sense of a small person adrift in a big space. Kent Dorsey's set is evocative without forcing itself into the picture. It's a really impressive-looking space, and Kurt Landisman's lighting brings it out at times, while always keeping the focus on Ross. My only little issue was with the sound, as from my seat on the east side, the music and other sound cue were nearly all inaudible (though the words of the play were always clear).

Which brings us to the acting, because in a solo play, that's really what it's about. Stacy Ross was an inspired choice to portray Didion, as she can easily portray a big personality such as Didion, including the self-deprecating asides that abound. in the script. But what really comes through is the timing, the pauses of contemplation or hesitation, the moments of introspection that seem spontaneous, and the gradual shifts in and out of manic energy. Ross and Carlin have done a masterful job of pacing the show so that it doesn't seem possible that the full ninety minutes have passed, but somehow the whole story has emerged.

And ultimately, that's what theater is about (and especially a solo show): telling a story. This is a truly compelling story to start with, and the portrayal of the character here just layers more and more meaning onto the words in the script. It's a tremendous exhibition of raw emotion tempered by dispassionate writing, and the delivery is the key to it all.

Bottom Line

I loved this show. I was a little concerned that my expectations were going to be so high that whatever came on stage was bound to disappoint, but it did not. It was a really smooth, utterly convincing rendering of this very difficult, emotional script. In the wrong hands it could have descended into melodramatic hand-wringing and over-emoting.

But this show is marvelously controlled, finely tuned, with subtlety and grace in the face of a nightmare scenario. There's a lot of reality impacting, and it's both fascinating and horrific to watch how it all plays out.

Needless to say, I highly recommend this show. It has now been extended to run through July 28, so there are lots of opportunities to see it still. Go.

"As You LIke It" at Oregon Shakespeare Festival

Oregon Shakespeare Festival ensemble photo by Jenny Graham

It's always a little bittersweet when we come to the last show of a trip to Ashland. One wants to enjoy every moment, but there is the knowledge that it's ending and there is a drive home coming up. But sometimes we get lucky (or is it smart?) and schedule a comedy to be the last show of the trip. Such was the case yesterday with As You Like It.

The Play

With most Shakespearean comedies, you have to just kind of accept some rather bizarre premise and go with it, because if you think too much about it, you'll just sit there shaking your head for a couple of hours. This is no exception.

For reasons never really explained or understood, Duke Frederick has exiled his sibling Duke Senior to the forest of Arden, which turns out to be a kind of pastoral paradise where exiles collect, herd sheep, and fall in love. I'm kind of unclear why this is such a punishment, since Duke Frederick has turned the city into a kind of autocratic hellhole. But there we are. And Duke Senior's daughter, Rosalind, didn't get exiled because she was super great friends with her cousin, Celia. Until she makes the mistake of being attracted to Orlando, the younger son of Sir Rowland de Boys. I can't remember why Frederick hated deBoys, and therefore his son(s), but again, there we are.

So Frederick is mad at Rosalind and banishes her. So she runs off to Arden, and Celia goes with her (making Frederick all the madder), and the court fool, Touchstone, decides to join them because reasons. Then Orlando finds out, and decides to follow her to Arden. But of course Rosalind is traveling disguised as a man called Ganymede, so when she and the lovesick Orlando meet up, it's obvious that she can't just reveal herself (which would make this a very short play indeed), but must instead tell him to pretend Ganymede is Rosalind and practice wooing. And he goes along with it for some reason.

Meanwhile Rosalind/Ganymede also encounters Duke Senior (her mother) and again can't reveal herself. And other stuff happens. A shepherdess falls in love with Ganymede, apparently because "he" is unkind to her. The fool falls for a shepherd. Orlando's estranged older brother, Oliver, realizes what an idiot he is and runs off to Arden where he in turn falls for Celia (who is still traveling as a woman, but calling herself Aliena (or something like that), because changing her name will make her unrecognizable. Or something.

Truly, none of this story makes a lick of sense, but somehow it's kind of silly and fun, and you find you don't mind so much, and isn't the forest pleasant?

The Production

Because the story is  complex and confusing one, OSF and directory Rosa Joshi have decided to liven it up by gender-swapping some of the roles. So Duke Senior is somehow a woman (Rachel Crowl), for example. As is Jacques (Erica Sullivan), one of Duke Senior's attendants who serves as sort of a fool-in-exile to be a foil to the other fool, Touchstone (Rex Young), because one can never have too many fools in a comedy.

Rosalind (Jessica Ko) is really very good, though. She has a remarkable ability to change apparent moods almost instantly, which works well in a play where nothing is what it appears to be from moment to moment. Orlando (Román Zaragoza) is (unsurprisingly) quite befuddled most of the time, because he seems to be the only one in Arden who isn't pretending to be someone or something that he isn't. But he makes kind of an amiable if inexplicably dimwitted foil for Rosalind's manipulations.

The set is kind of interestingly colorful and fairly simple, though one might wonder why there are large chimes hanging throughout the forest, for example. The scenes in Duke Frederick (Kevin Kenerly)'s court are needlessly long and regimented--we get the point already. But overall, the whole thing sort of works in a big, convoluted, silly way.

Bottom Line

This isn't a brilliant play. It's a confusing mish-mash of a play. And for some reason Joshi felt the need to add to that, rather than make it clearer. I guess that's an approach. In any case, it works fine as long as you don't try to make sense of it, because there is no sense to be had at at point. Maybe they were just trying to compete with the outdoor adaptation of Alice in Wonderland (which I did not see) for the title of most absurd spectacle in the festival this year.

It's hard to say what they think they were up to, but on some weird, surreal level, it kind of works. It doesn't have the technical polish that was evident in All's Well, for example, that elevated that beyond the limitations of the script. This production just seems to sort of buy into the absurdity of the story and try to match it with absurdities in the production. I can respect that.

Some parts of this really work, and it was fun and engaging, but weird. So I can't endorse it wholeheartedly, but if you go in with fairly low expectations (like, don't plan on anything making sense) you can have a good time.

This production runs through the end of the season in late October in the Bowmer Theatre.

"Indecent" at Oregon Shakespeare Festival

Oregon Shakespeare Festival ensemble photo by Jenny Graham

Spoiler alert: this is a really good play.

Paula Vogel's play Indecent was originally commissioned as part of the Oregon Shakespeare Festival's American Revolutions program. It has since played and won awards on Broadway and elsewhere, and is just now returning to its roots in Ashland. And it's quite a remarkable play.

The Play

Indecent tells the story of another play and playwright, set in the historical Yiddish theaters of Europe and the United States. Focusing on Sholem Asch’s play God of Vengeance, written in 1906 and produced with much controversy from the outset. The substance of Asch's play was tricky all along, dealing with a Jewish man who runs a brothel who commissions a Torah scroll as a way to gain respectability and a suitor for his daughter. The combination of prostitution, religion, and lesbianism added up to a lot of controversy, but the show was produced all over Europe in Yiddish theaters, finally coming to New York City. After much success in Jewish theaters downtown, the play was translated into English and moved to Broadway in 1923, albeit with some substantive changes (themselves controversial among the company). The Broadway show was eventually closed down by the vice squad for being indecent, and the actors and producer put on trial.

The play follows the acting company, the playwright, and the play through the whole first half of the 20th century. Let's just say World War II and related matters play a big role, too.

But Indecent is really, really well written, fascinating for its portrayals of the Yiddish theater (and presenting scenes and songs in Yiddish) as well as for telling the convoluted and difficulty-riddled tale. There is a lot to like on a lot of levels.

The Production

The OSF production is also quite spectacular, with a relatively small cast portraying all the roles over time, with only one actor (Benjamin Pelteson as Lemml, the stage manager) remaining constant throughout. The acting, singing, and dancing are all excellent, and the rather simple stage design works very well. The projected supertexts are a bit distracting (or at least were a little difficult from our seats fairly close to the stage), but very helpful when one doesn't understand Yiddish songs or dialogue.

There was a little discussion within our group about the casting, as some members of the cast didn't really look convincingly like Polish Jews. I didn't find that troubling, and after the first few minutes didn't notice it at all, but others felt it was somewhere between inappropriate and distracting. That said, I'm pretty impressed that anyone could handle the difficult text and music in multiple languages at all, so I wasn't troubled by appearances.

Director Shana Cooper has pulled together a really difficult project into a very crisp production. The performance we saw yesterday was either the first or second full performance after previews, so one might expect a few glitches. But no, it was really smoothly done.

Bottom Line

I really can't say enough about this show. I didn't know much about it going in, and was blown away by both the material and the quality of the design and presentation. I would say this was hands-down the best show we saw (out of seven) this weekend in Ashland.

The show runs through October 27 in the Bowmer Theatre, and there appear to be plenty of tickets available, so that's a great excuse to get yourself up to Ashland this fall!

"Macbeth" at Oregon Shakespeare Festival

Oregon Shakespeare Festival photo by Jenny Graham

Ah, the Scottish Play. Nothing like following up a hilarious comedy in the afternoon with a gory tragedy at night to set the mood. But this is one the classic Shakespeare plays that gets produced pretty frequently, so no question, we had to see it.

The Play

Yeah, not going to summarize this for you. It's Macbeth. From the program and the preface we attended beforehand, we got the impression that they were going to emphasize witches and the "love story" of Lord and Lady Macbeth.

We did learn a few tidbits in the preface that were worthwhile. The play is based on some historical figures--there really was a King Duncan, and a Macbeth, and several other characters who seem to be at least loosely based on historical people. The story (as one would expect from Shakespeare) is kind of a mashup of various incidents of regicide and succession fights in actual Scottish history. Also, the timing of the appearance of the play suggests it was written to curry favor with King James early in his reign (he being a Scottish king with an intense interest in witches and witchcraft).

The Production

I was keen to see this show, in part because of good casting. Lord and Lady Macbeth (Danforth Comins and Amy Kim Waschke, respectively) are favorites of ours in the company, and Bay Area product William Hodgson is Malcolm, a quite important role. Plus, you know, Macbeth.

On the whole it's a pretty solid production, quite visually striking (Macbeth is always best staged outdoors, as it is here in the Elizabethan theater) and well-acted. The opening scene is added: a brief funeral for the Macbeths' dead child (who is mentioned a few times in the script, but rarely emphasized). It's a powerful, wordless scene, and a great showcase for Comins's expressive face and body--he is the very picture of abject desolation at the loss of his child.

Unfortunately, that sense of loss and longing doesn't carry through the rest of the production. It's as if they forgot they wanted to emphasize that thread, because it never really reappears as a motivational point. Conversely, the trio of witches (Robin Goodrin Nordli, Miriam A. Laube, and Erica Sullivan) are omnipresent. They are literally almost always on stage, seeming to indicate that Macbeth is constantly being driven (or at least influenced) by their malign presence, though they mostly seem like a distraction. To say nothing of the appearance of Hecate (Michele Mais), a part usually cut entirely from the play (and with good reason, as it really does nothing to advance the plot). That inclusion is quite inexplicable.

And though the Macbeths clearly demonstrate the passion of their relationship, there doesn't seem to be much depth or nuance to it. The actual chemistry or connection doesn't come through, and it's unclear what director Jose Luis Valenzuela wants us to make of it. This isn't the controlling, driving Lady Macbeth we sometimes see, nor does it appear that Macbeth is motivated by a particular ambition or desire to advance his family. For all his brooding and emoting, this Macbeth is something of a cipher.

But boy, can he emote. Comins turns up the crazy pretty quickly, suggesting that this Macbeth is pretty much on the thin edge of sanity all along. Unfortunately, he turns the knob up to 11 rather early, leaving not much room to maneuver later in the show. The key scene late in the play after Lady Macbeth kills herself (which is extremely impressively depicted, by the way--bravo!) is intense, but it's hard to see Macbeth as being crushed or broken by his wife's death because he is already so unhinged.

I will say that Hodgson's Malcolm is quite effective in his late scenes. He has a steadiness and self-composition that contrasts nicely with the late, deranged king.

The other element that I found a bit baffling was the Macduffs. Chris Butler as Macduff is a fine fighting man, but despite his words, it's really never shown that he's a family man--there are no intimate connections between him and his wife (Mais again) and children. Similarly, the scene where Lady Macduff and her children are slaughtered is normally one of the most wrenching, emotional points in the play, but her seeming stoic detachment takes all the air out of the scene. Similarly, upon learning of his family's demise, Macduff says he's bereft, but he only shows it as angry, and he stays there the rest of the play.

Bottom Line

It's a pretty good Macbeth on the whole, a high-quality production and all that you'd expect from OSF and one of their signature Shakespeare shows. But the emotional content is just off. We never get to see the derangement growing, or the ambition being stoked from a tiny ember to an all-encompassing obsession. A play with this intensity demands some subtlety to make the emotional highs and lows work, but for some reason this director seems to feel everyone just needs to be either repressed or completely raving, with no path through a middle ground.

So it's a bit disappointing, if generally well done. Definitely not the best Macbeth I've seen.

"La Comedia of Errors" at Oregon Shakespeare Festival

A couple of years ago the Oregon Shakespeare Festival announced a new program they call "Play On!", a project to translate all 39 plays in the Shakespeare canon into language more accessible to modern audiences, and including 36 diverse playwriting voices. The project is not without some controversy, but it definitely has some admirable goals.

And the first fruits of this project to reach production at OSF comes this year with a production called La Comedia of Errors, a bilingual adaptation of a Play On! translation of Shakespeare's The Comedy of Errors. I've been keeping an open mind about the Play On! project, so this is my first take on a first glimpse of an adaptation of one of the results.

The Play

I'm pretty sure I've already established that The Comedy of Errors is one of my favorite Shakespearean comedies. I went out of my way to see it in Stratford last year, and I quite enjoyed the last version I saw in Ashland. So it seems like a good first peek into Play On!

But this is not strictly speaking a Play On! project, rather a bilingual adaptation of one. The starting point was playwright Christina Anderson's translation of the original play. Then two more hands got involved, Lydia G. Garcia and outgoing OSF Artistic Director Bill Rauch, who turned it into a bilingual romp. What I don't know is how much of what I saw was a result of the translation, and how much the adaptation. I suspect mostly the latter, but I don't really know.

The other aspect of this I should mention is that this is not a fully-staged OSF production. It is, in fact, meant to be a touring show for local schools and community groups, and as such has a simplified staging involving relatively few props, essentially no scenery, and costume pieces, rather than full costumes for the most part.

The adaptation sets the play squarely in modern times, straddling the US-Mexico border. Two sets of twins are born in the same hospital in Mexico, and one family adopts the second set of twins to raise as their own. Encountering a storm on a flight from Canada, the plane crashes in the desert near the border in a sandstorm, separating the family. The father, with half of each set of twins, is returned to Mexico, while the mother and the other two twins are caught by the border patrol and kept in the US.

I should note that this whole back story is presented in pantomime, quite humorously.

Fast forward over 30 years and we find ourselves at the start of the play, with the father having come to the US to find his lost family, facing deportation at the hands of the local sheriff, while unbeknownst to him his Mexican children are in the same town getting into confused hijinks because they look like their identical twins who happen to live in the town.

From there the story is pretty close to that of Shakespeare's play, with some little adaptations to fit the modern setting. The real key is that characters are speaking in both Spanish and English, but done in such a way that a speaker of either language should be able to follow the plot. It's really quite clever, very funny, and very well done.

The one real addition to the play is a created character who sits in the audience and interjects a few salient points about the plot or the language that really helps things along.

The Production

Because the production is mostly meant to tour, it doesn't have a permanent home in any of the OSF theaters. But when spaces are available the festival sells tickets and mounts the play in various spaces, including the Thomas Theatre and (in our case) one of their rehearsal halls. Seating consisted of two concentric circles of chairs with four designated gaps for players to enter and exit.

As we entered, the members of the cast were milling about in matching jackets (so, more uniforms than costumes), greeting audience members casually. It was very pleasant. And then, they started the show. It's quickly paced, quite interactive, and of course, very funny.

I was really impressed with how easy it was to follow the story, convoluted as it is, while only understanding about half the language. The audience stayed fully engaged, and applauded enthusiastically at the end.

All told, it's about 90 minutes and tells a stripped-down version of the story quite effectively, with some statements at the end about the current situation at the US border that are relevant, but not preachy.

Bottom Line

This was great fun, an interesting experiment that seems to work well. It's fun to see so many of the regular OSF company working up close and quite personally. That alone is worth the price of admission. But I also thought it was cool to see how well the bilingual presentation worked. I would be interested to know if it worked as well for people who a) speak mostly or only Spanish, and b) don't know the original play well or at all. I suspect it would still work.

If you're in Ashland this year, I recommend seeing this. It's quite fun and innovative, and really gets you thinking about how storytelling works in a theatrical environment. I appreciate that OSF is making this effort to reach out to other parts of the larger community.

The show runs through the end of October on the OSF campus, and in various venues in the Rogue Valley thereafter.

"All's Well That Ends Well" at Oregon Shakespeare Festival

Oregon Shakespeare Festival photo by Jenny Graham

We're up to our third play of the weekend, and we finally get some Shakespeare! All's Well that Ends Well is not one of my favorites. Indeed, it was long categorized as one of Shakespeare's "problem plays," in part because it has elements that don't fit well with the standard definitions of comedy and tragedy. But it is most definitely a comedy, if not one of the best.

I had only seen this play once before, here in Ashland in 2009. And truthfully, that's about all I remember of it. Nothing about that production sticks in my mind. This one was better.

The Play

Thematically this play is pretty interesting. Helen (Royer Bockus), the orphaned daughter of a poor physician, has been adopted into the household of the widowed Countess of Rossillion (Vilma Silva), where she has become smitten with the Countess's son, Bertram (Daisuke Tsuji). But Bertram has nothing but loathing for the low-born Helen, and when Helen uses potions inherited from her father to save the life of the dying king of France (Kevin Kenerly), the king grants her the choice of husbands, and she chooses Bertram.

So they are wed, but Bertram refuses to consummate the marriage, choosing instead to run off to Italy to fight for the Duke of Florence (Tyrone Wilson), accompanied by his servant, the unreliable liar and coward Parolles (Al Espinosa). Helen pursues Bertram and eventually uses tricks to win him back. One of Shakespeare's trademark mega-happy, mass wedding endings ensues, although this production plays it a bit differently than usual.

The Production

Given the limitations of the material, this production is excellent. The cast is terrific, the set design (by Mariana Sanchez) and lighting (by Carolina Ortiz-Herrera) are wonderful, and the music (composed by sound designer Amy Altadonna, with live scoring and performance by Jane Lui) adds a lot. We all felt thoroughly engaged throughout, and visually and aurally the whole production was really excellent.

What really sets the production apart, though, is the depiction of Helen. From the time she appears in her t-shirt proclaiming "MISFIT" and her multi-colored hair, you know this is not the classic Shakespearean woman. And indeed, Helen is fairly unique among Shakespeare's heroines in the way she takes control of her own destiny, and under the direction of Tracy Young, our Helen will buck expectations and while "winning" back the hand of her husband, she will steer her own course once they are reunited.

Bottom Line

I was very pleasantly surprised by this production. I really enjoyed it throughout. I appreciated the unconventional approach to Helen and Bertram's relationship, and just the overall quality of the whole thing. It's never going to be one of my favorite plays, but this might be the best production of it you could want to see. I highly recommend it, and it runs through mid-October in the outdoor Elizabethan Theatre.

"Between Two Knees" at Oregon Shakespeare Festival

Oregon Shakespeare Festival photo by Jenny Graham

It's always interesting to see what the Oregon Shakespeare Festival comes up with for each season's non-Shakespeare plays. One source of good options for the last several years has been their "American Revolutions" series of commissioned plays about key moments in American history. It has give us such works as All the Way about LBJ and Roe about the abortion issue.

This year, American Revolutions turns out a play that is "a satiric romp" about the massacre at Wounded Knee, and about the history and treatment of Native Americans by (mostly) white people. It's a bit uneven, still a work in progress, but there is a lot to think about here and it is generally presented in a fun way.

The Play

This is a non-traditional play, to put it mildly. In many ways it works more like a series of comic sketches, though it does have a vague through line that could be construed as a plot. But it's clear from the opening, as our narrator rises through the trap door in the stage, losing his costume as he does, that there will be a running theme of low humor and cheap gags. But the play is written by a sketch comedy group called the 1491s, so none of this is really surprising.

For a while it's unclear where any of this is going to go. Are we really just going to have gags? But it does settle down a bit and we start to see a kind of story, told through the history of one family, that takes us through the lowlights of Indian history. A good example is when a game show suddenly breaks out, and we're on "Wheel of Indian Massacres," where they spin a wheel to choose the name of a massacre to discuss. It soon becomes clear that few in the audience are familiar with most of them, and we have one of our themes for the show: the disappearance of much of Native American history from most American discourse.

The narrative goes through the scandals of reservations, Indian schools, relocations, and military service. Although the subject matter is unceasingly bleak, the humor and gags help move it along and make it possible to address the issues with some context and perspective.

Truly, in spite of the laughs, most of the subject matter isn't very pleasant, but it all culminates in a deus-ex-machina happy ending that serves to underscore how dismal most of the outcomes have really always been. And though much of the material is meaningfully accurate, they quip at one point that they strive hard to be as accurate as a 1970s children's history book.

The Production

As a world premiere, this show displays some of the rough edges that one might expect. It's definitely an uneven ride, but the level of production support from OSF makes up for a lot. It's a very talented cast, blending members of the 1491s with experienced OSF actors and designers, so the production quality is higher than you'd normally see in such a production.

Director Eric Ting keeps the story on track for the most part, though some of the scenes are clearly a bit longer and slower than optimal. But on the whole the result is pleasing, and our group found ourselves discussing the play and some of the issues it raised all through dinner and the rest of the evening. So there is definitely substance lurking amidst the jokes.

Bottom Line

I found myself unsure, even up through the intermission, how I felt about the whole experience. I considered myself fairly aware of most of the issues presented in the play, but uncertain whether the gag-oriented presentation was really an appropriate venue for the discussion. Ultimately I concluded that I liked it (not loved it). This isn't the first time OSF's American Revolutions has gone down this path. The first of the commissions that ended up on their stage was American Night: The Ballad of Juan Jose by Richard Montoya and Culture Clash. Much like other works by Culture Clash I've seen, the use of irreverent and self-deprecating humor serves to advance the understanding of difficult cultural conflicts.

Ultimately I'd say this effort by the 1491s isn't as successful as the pieces I've seen from Culture Clash, but it does go a long way to making a palatable presentation that enables them to sneak important and difficult ideas into the discussion. So again, while I didn't love it, I think the piece works and is worth seeing. It runs through the end of October.

"Cambodian Rock Band" at Oregon Shakespeare Festival

Oregon Shakespeare Festival photo by Jenny Graham

It's time for the annual trip to Ashland for the Oregon Shakespeare Festival. This year is a little different for us because our daughter did kind of an advance scouting trip with her high school back in April, so she saw several of the shows that we were already planning to see, including this first show of the weekend, Cambodian Rock Band, by Lauren Yee.

We saw another show by Yee earlier this year at SF Playhouse, called King of the Yees. That's a very different show, but does have some interesting commonalities, especially the relationship between a father and daughter (a personal story in the case of Yees). But this is a much deeper, darker story.

The Play

Although the play starts in 2008, it quickly harkens back to the 1970s, specifically to the period just as Cambodia falls to the Khmer Rouge, and the horrible situation that ensued. But prior to that, we learn there was a thriving musical scene, and the play follows musicians from one band all the way through.

It's a really fascinating, lively show that includes both fun music (in both English and Cambodian) and comical interactions in the present day that mask some of the intense struggles that lie buried in the past. I have to say that despite some similarities in the father-daughter portrayal from Yee's other work, this is a much more complete, polished work. I'm quite impressed with this piece of writing.

The Production

Wow. There are some amazing portrayals here. Joe Ngo as Chum is phenomenal--not only does he portray his character at two very different ages, seamlessly slipping back and forth with changes in physical and verbal behavior, but he also plays guitar and sings in both English and Cambodian. It's an impressive performance. Similarly, his foil Duch (Daisuke Tsuji) is amazingly physical (though his musical performances are considerably less demanding), and the emotional scenes between them are just wrenching. Add in the third key member of that trio from the past, Ted Lang (Moses Villarama), and you've got an amazing group.

That's not to slight the rest of the cast--they are all terrific--but those three form the key dramatic core of the show. As we bounce back and forth from rock concert to Khmer Rouge prison, the simple but elegant set serves as an excellent frame for the story.

Bottom Line

What a great start to the weekend! This is one of the outstanding shows I've seen at Ashland, and that bar is pretty high. It's remarkably sparse in its design and execution but extremely expressive. It's just a terrific piece of complex theater.

I could go on, but the message is pretty simple: great show. Go see it.

"Fahrenheit 451" at Quantum Dragon Theatre

Quantum Dragon photo by Morgan Finley King

Before slipping back into "real time," I want to write up a show we saw last weekend, in part because it's still playing this weekend and it's worth seeing, and it's also the first time I've written up a show from these guys, so it would be a shame to miss the opportunity.

I will add that Quantum Dragon Theatre is a niche player that is one of less than a handful of American theater companies that exist specifically to produce science fiction plays. You can see a lot of their back story in this article from early this year in the San Francisco Chronicle. As someone who spent a lot of his youth reading the likes of Ray Bradbury, Lester Del Rey, and Robert Heinlein (and who still seeks out good, meaty SF material), I truly appreciate having this theater company around.

The Play

OK, you probably know the book. Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451 is one of the classics of the 20th century. What I didn't know until very recently is the Bradbury did a stage adaptation of the novel, and that's the script that Director Sam Tillis started with for this production.

I'm not even going to summarize this. If you don't know the story, that's all the more reason you should go see this play, because it truly is part of the American canon of the 20th century. Suffice it to say that firemen in this future scenario are no longer putting out fires, they are setting them, to burn books.

I will say, from the current day, the specter of burning books doesn't have quite the same relevance, since printed books are no longer the sole repository of much of human knowledge and culture. But the point about suppression of thought, art, and culture remains just as pertinent today as ever.

Bradbury's adaptation is (unsurprisingly) a pretty straightforward rendering of the basic story, trimmed down to a roughly two-hour run time. I'm not aware of Bradbury as a writer for the stage, but he did a lot of screen writing (among other things, he adapted the screenplay for Moby Dick, which resulted in a book many years later called Green Shadows, White Whale that I highly recommend--but I digress), so the fact that he created a workable stage adaptation is no surprise.

Casting this play is a pretty interesting endeavor, though. There are only a couple of big roles, a few supporting roles, and a number of minor bits that come in only at the end. But on the whole it's a satisfying adaptation.

The Production

Quantum Dragon is not a big, glitzy, high-budget affair. But truly, for most science fiction to work, you don't need fancy special effects and sets. This genre has always been about ideas and people, so as long as those come through, a minimalist approach should work well. If anything, this production tries to do a little too much. We could do with a bit less in the way of scenery changing, and just move on with the story. It works OK, and was probably more distracting for me because I was sitting right up front, but I would have been OK with leaving some things in place and just working around them.

The two key roles, Captain Beatty (Dorian Lockett) and Montag (Ron Chapman) are strong. Lockett, the only Equity actor in the cast, has the chops to pull off some of the longer speeches, and a physical presence that manages to dominate the scenes he is in. Chapman is steady and a bit ponderous as Montag, which works for a character so conflicted. Melanie Marshall and James Aaron Oh hold their own as the other firemen/paramedics, and Emily Corbo is remarkably expressive as Mildred, Montag's wife. Overall the acting is far better that I was expecting from a company of this size. And the ensemble that gathers at the end (many of whom have been doing stagehand duty) features some really terrific small roles.

I could quibble about a few of the directorial choices, and there are definitely issues with some of the specific elements of the story that don't quite translate into today's milieu, but all of that kind of misses the point. Science fiction virtually never relies of the specifics of the story: it's all metaphor, it's all about bigger ideas than the particular ones depicted.

Bottom Line

To say this is a story about book burning is to miss most of the point. Fahrenheit 451 is about ideas and culture and the persistence of those things in the face of efforts to suppress them. And that comes through, viscerally, in this production. My only issue with Quantum Dragon has been that their shows don't run very long (this one closes this coming weekend), so I often miss them because I can't free up a night during their runs. But I like what I've seen, and reports of their previous shows are very positive. So go see them, and take your other nerdy friends, too.

This is a story worth hearing, and produced in a manner well worth seeing. Go!

The Hiatus

*sigh*

It's been since last September since I posted anything. I haven't stopped seeing theater, but I concluded that this past school year was not going to afford me time to write, so I wouldn't even try.

Now that I have successfully seen my daughter graduate, I want to get back to writing. So let's see how that works out.

Thanks for bearing with me.