"The Odyssey" at Oregon Shakespeare Festival

This is the first of a whole bunch of posts about plays at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival this year. Over the course of three visits, we plan to see all eleven shows on offer. This first trip is the biggest, with six plays, so I guess it's only appropriate to start with the longest, Mary Zimmerman's adaptation of Homer's epic poem The Odyssey.

Of personal interest, this was the first time anyone in our party had sat in the balcony of the Allen Elizabethan Theatre. We were in the front row, just to one side, and the sight lines were excellent. I think I might seek out seats like that in the future. It gives a really good view of all the levels of the stage superstructure, though our view of the voms were somewhat occluded. But overall we thought it was an excellent place to see the play--especially for those shorter members of the group, as there was no one blocking any part of their view.

The Play

No, I'm not going to summarize either the whole epic or the whole play here. Suffice it to say Odysseus is delayed about 20 years coming home from the Trojan War. His wife, Penelope and son Telemachus are besieged by suitors who want to marry Penelope, believing Odysseus to be dead. For years, they essentially occupy their home in Ithaca, consuming and carousing.

The story is essentially the retelling of all the things that delayed his return. Gods and monsters are involved. Really, read it if you haven't. The play is based on the Robert Fitzgerald translation, but there is also a newer, more poetic translation by Robert Fagles. They are both good.

The Adaptation

It's always challenging adapting works that are a) long and b) well known. Mary Zimmerman doesn't shy away from those projects, however. She has a knack for taking mythical tales and transforming them into something that works well onstage.

This effort was perhaps the most straightforward of her adaptations I've seen. Much of it, particularly toward the end of the first act and all of the second, where it's pretty much Odysseus telling his story, works really well. I thought some of the earlier bits felt repetitive, but in retrospect I think that was more a muddling of the frame story with the tall tales within. It's much clearer later.

The Production

First point, Zimmerman in her role as director made some good choices with the designers. By keeping the staging relatively simple, it adds to the storytelling aspect, relying on the imagination rather than fancy stagecraft. So Odysseus builds a raft from just a few poles laid out on the stage to suggest the shape. Those poles are later used as oars by his crew, and for various purposes by the suitors.

Second, the outdoor setting is quite marvelous for a show of this scope. The large, open stage and the moonlight from above add to the "tales around the campfire" aspect of the production. The actors are amplified. That's just a reality in the outdoor theater these days. I find it unfortunate, but I understand that a lot of the patrons have difficulty hearing otherwise.

Third, I quite liked the opening scene, where Christiana Clark starts out trying to read the book of the Odyssey and finds it daunting until the Muse awakens and brings the story to life for her. I thought it was very well done (Clark is terrific throughout, mostly as Athena), and an effective transition into the ficton of the play.

Discussing the play at intermission, a couple of us felt like it had been a little slow, and a little lacking in anything other than just kind of outlining the story. The latter is kind of intrinsic to adapting an entire epic to a single play (albeit almost 3.5 hours of play!) . The pacing could probably be tightened up a bit, too, but ultimately...it's an epic. It will take a while. But I kind of felt that telling the story is good, but I felt like I ought to have some notion of where this was going by then, other than just being halfway through the story.

There is more of a payoff in the second act. The reunion scenes are very well handled: Odysseus and Penelope have a very touching scene, very effectively made intimate by lighting. And Penelope's red velvet dress is simple and beautifully elegant. Ultimately the payoff doesn't really seem to be any great new insight into The Odyssey, but it does an effective job of getting the key points of Homer's endings across. After twenty years, Odysseus and Penelope have to get past some trust issues, and they do in in classical form.

The Bottom Line

This is a production on a scale that only a theater like Ashland can pull off: big cast, long run time, lots of costumes, etc. But they have the budget, the staff, and the facilities to do it and do it well. Needless to say the acting is excellent, and many of the costumes are excellent (though Zeus's is somewhat wasted, as he is rarely on stage where we can really appreciate it).

Ultimately there is a reason why stories like the Odyssey stand up to centuries of retelling and translation: they are fundamentally strong tales. And OSF does a good job of putting this one on stage. Though the first act felt a bit long, the second seemed to fly by and really engaged us.

"Treasure Island" at Berkeley Rep

This was one of the shows that got me excited for the current season at Berkeley Rep. Treasure Island was one of those books I loved when I was a kid, and enjoyed when I re-read it as an adult. So seeing it on stage, adapted and directed by Mary Zimmerman,  in a production in conjunction with Lookingglass Theatre Company (of whom I've heard great things), seemed like a sure thing. Plus, pirates!

And on the whole, I liked it. There are some issues, but overall, I liked the production. Reactions in my group were mixed, including some who left at intermission.

Summary

Really, what do I need to say? It's Treasure Island, adapted (quite faithfully) from the Robert Louis Stevenson novel. It's Jim Hawkins, Long John Silver, Billy Bones, and a cast of pirates looking for treasure. On an island. X marks the spot. This is kind of the Ur-pirate story, and if you don't know it, nothing I say here is going to help you.

The set is very clever. It's a big wooden swing with ship's rigging that can be stationary to serve as the Admiral Benbow Inn or the stockade on the island, but can also rock and roll when the ship is at sea. I thought that was quite well done. There are roving musicians playing sea chanteys, and overall the nautical elements are quite convincing.

Unexpected Excitement

In the second act, just as Jim is about to make his surprise entrance to the stockade, a fire alarm went off. We were all pretty stunned for a few seconds, and then Captain Smollett (Philip R. Smith) took command and urged us all to evacuate in a calm and organized manner. We did. We all headed out to the street, the Berkeley Fire Department came and apparently concluded that the alarm was in error (or the put out whatever set it off), and we filed back in after about a 15-minute interlude. The cast did a good job of picking up where they'd left off.

I have to say, I can't recall ever being in a theater and having an alarm go off like that. We had a somewhat similar episode during a college basketball game many years ago at the Oakland Coliseum Arena, but no one apparently believed it was real. They just kept playing, and no one left. Kind of surreal, that.

Anyway, it made for kind of a long evening. The program lists the run time as 2:10, plus a 15-minute intermission. So one would expect the 7:00 show to end before 9:30, but we didn't get out until about 10:00, so things ran a bit long even without the interruption.

My Thoughts

It did seem a bit sluggish at times. We deliberated over whether the heavily accented characters were speaking slowly so as to enunciate more clearly. But truthfully, even with that they were a bit hard to understand at times. And both Jim Hawkins (John Babbo) and Long John Silver (Steven Epp) seemed to have some difficulty deciding which accent they were going to use. Where other actors were changing roles at times, both of these were playing only a single role, so a solid accent (whatever it be) would be helpful. At least one, probably two, of our party who left at the intermission said they just couldn't take the wandering accents from those characters.

But we persisted through that, and were mostly pleased that we did. The second act gets a bit more into the psychological drama of negotiating with pirates when your health and safety, at least, are on the line. I'll spare you any spoilers. Suffice it to say that we get to a satisfactory ending.

Maybe my expectations were a bit too high for this show. But I did think the production was top quality (set, light, and sound all very well designed and implemented). The pacing and accent issues struck me as issues that I would have expected director Zimmerman to have ironed out long before this--certainly I have not encountered such in the other productions of hers I've seen at Berkeley Rep and Ashland.

And finally there is Steven Epp. I like the guy--really, I do. He is a very talented clown and actor, but in all the roles I've seen him play, he is definitely Steven Epp. And that contributed somewhat to the slow pace of the play tonight, as he mugged and drew out some of his bits. He does it well, but at a price to the overall production. Those stylings are suited to a broad farce than in an ensemble adventure story.

Bottom Line

It was worth going. There was a lot to like in the show, but even without the fire-alarm interruption, the show was feeling a bit long. A bit tighter direction and a little more discipline with the language would have helped a lot.

But still, pirates! And the second pirate show of the season at Berkeley Rep, following The Hypocrites' Pirates of Penzance. So extra points for extra pirates.