"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.