"Hamlet" at Marin Shakespeare Company

 You already know I'm a sucker for Hamlet. Not just my frequent-flyer status when Shotgun did their "Hamlet Roulette" several years ago, where I ended up seeing about 18 different variations on their version with actors drawing their roles right before curtain. But lately, of course, seeing The Motive and the Cue and Fat Ham have rekindled the old interest. Plus there is other personal connection here, so, more Hamlet!

The Play

As usual, I won't bother summarizing a classic play such as this one. But here I should note that this is a pretty unique interpretation of the play, as envisioned by Jon Tracy, the new artistic producer for summer shows at Marin Shakespeare Company. Jon is a friend of mine, and also a deep thinker about theater and such, so I was interested in seeing his take on this play. Among other things, he endeavors to make sure all the characters (except the ones he edited out) have real character, real stories. And he definitely gives agency to some of the characters who normally just seem to go along for the ride.

I don't want to spill the beans on some of the changes (though you can learn about a number of them in the mainstream press reviews), but suffice it to say that it's a unique and provocative take on Hamlet.

The Production

At over 2.5 hours, it seems a little silly to call this a "trimmed-down" version of the play, but it is very much that. Entire scenes and plot lines (Fortinbras? What Norwegians?) are excised, and other scenes are kind of mashed together, but for the most part it works, and it maintains the messages that Tracy and the company want to focus on. 

Several things I found very effective: Bookending the play with the grave digger worked really well (and it really helps when the grave digger (Lady Zen) has an amazing voice. Breaking Hamlet's many soliloquies into smaller pieces, interspersed with action that makes them clearer. And in one case, having Hamlet (Nick Musleh) share the soliloquy with Ophelia (désirée freda), making it much richer and also adding to our understanding of both characters and their relationship. And playing with expectations generally, especially around the way characters die. I mean, it's still Hamlet, and lots of them are going to die, but this version changes up the way some of those happen, and it works well.

Some things work less well. The set (by Nina Ball, of course) is quite simple, featuring a large table and some moveable chairs. But rotating the table between scenes is time-consuming and distracting. Also, since when does a king (e.g., Michael Torres as Claudius) move furniture? It makes more sense when Polonius (Richard Pallaziol) is staging a room for his boss or for some particular meeting or use. But other times it just makes no sense in the context of the play. And of all the adjustments to spotlight characters and their stories, Laertes (Rinabeth Apostol) comes out on the short end. If anything, I have less understanding of his behavior in this version than I normally do in Hamlet.

But overall I thought the production was good and interesting. It didn't feel like it went on for over 2.5 hours. It was fun and kept us thinking and talking about the production for days.

The Bottom Line

I think this is well worth seeing. If you're not well versed in Hamlet, some bits of it might be confusing, but the crowd we saw it with seemed very pleased, and we enjoyed it greatly.

The play runs through July 16 at the Forest Meadows Amphitheater at Dominican University in San Rafael. The Amphitheater is quite nice, by the way. This was my first visit, and one of the regular attendees pointed out lots of recent improvements to the amphitheater.

Well worth your time. Go see Hamlet!

"A Midsummer Night's Dream" at Shakespeare's Globe Theatre

Shakespeare's Globe production photo by Helen Murray

 

This was my second visit to Shakespeare's Globe Theatre. The first must have predated my blogging, as I don't have a record of it. I'm pretty sure it was The Merchant of Venice. In any case, it was a very good production, so I was looking forward to this. Midsummer isn't my favorite Shakespeare play, but it can be very good, and I looked forward to what the Globe company would do with it.

The Play

It's Shakespeare. It's a comedy. Lots of fairies and a play within the play and Puck getting up to mischief. You know the drill.

The Production

One thing I like about plays at Shakespeare's Globe is that the theater is very traditional, to the point that they basically don't do sets. Minimal decoration, lots of interesting costuming, and let the play do most of the work. Having seen a number of way over-the-top productions of A Midsummer Night's Dream in recent years, I was looking forward to a more minimalist approach. This did not disappoint. aside from a net that provided Titania's bower and a few props for the mechanicals to use in their Pyramus and Thisbe, it was mostly just a stage and a bunch of actors.

Several things jumped out about the cast. One, it was quite diverse, and two, they cast women in a number of the more traditional male roles (e.g., Mariah Gale as Bottom). In fact, all the mechanicals were played by women, who also doubled as fairies. And Hermia was played by Francesca Mills, a little person, which gave extra power to some of the lines about her (e.g., "though she be but little, she is fierce"). Mills was terrific throughout.

This was a very energetic production. Where many versions of Midsummer stage the chasing and fighting in a fairly minimalist way, the crossed-up lovers were tearing all over the stage here. Weirdly, the least energy came from the craftsmen who were putting up the play within the play. They seemed almost an afterthought, particularly when it came to the actual play, which seemed a disservice to them. But overall, the production was of high quality and quite enjoyable. The nobles kind of inexplicably adjourned to the upper level when the mechanicals staged their play, which made the interplay difficult to hear and understand. By then the nobles were apparently all too drunk to really do much. That seemed a weird choice by director Elle While. But otherwise, it was pretty solid.

The Bottom Line

This play is very well known and frequently performed. As a result, it's pretty easy to mess up and pretty difficult to do in a really impressive way. This show was mostly done well, though with a few questionable choices. But the acting was very solid, the music was good, and overall it was a good time.

Seeing Shakespeare in the Globe is always a treat, and it's nice to see that they can take a clever path through a well-known text without going off in a crazy direction. This was solid, and worth seeing.

"King Lear" at Shakespeare Theatre Company

 

Shakespeare Theatre Company production photo by DJ Corey Photography

After not going to DC (or seeing any theater in DC) for many years, it seems a bit odd that we returned for our third trip in less than four months, but this was actually the first of the trips we planned, specifically so we could see this one play. Why seek out Yet Another King Lear? Specifically because of the actor playing Lear, Broadway star Patrick Page, who also happens to be a college friend of my wife's. We've seen him perform before (most recently in Hadestown on Broadway), but this seemed to be an ideal match between actor and role.

The Play

I don't need to spell this out. It's Shakespeare's King Lear. They've trimmed it down to only about two hours total, which should be fine, though I think it led to a couple of issues I'll touch on in the next section. Suffice it to say that it's a great play, and one that generally lives or dies by the actor playing the lead role. Lear has a really high percentage of the lines in the play, and even more so in this cut of the script. So this is very much Patrick Page's show.

The Production

This is the same, fairly small, theater where we saw Jane Anger last December, so it's a pretty intimate setting for a Shakespeare play. But that intimacy is great when it gives you a chance to see an actor like Page up close. What a treat! Page is a wonderfully nuanced actor, and watching his Lear descend into madness, fighting it all the way, is a wonder to behold. His interplay with his Fool (Michael Milligan) was just a delight. Probably the best choice made in the production was to have the Fool play his role quite straight, with almost no clowning. As the wise a restrained one, he emphasizes to Lear and the audience just how dramatically Lear declines.

Probably the other key role in the production is Matthew J. Harris as Edgar (and Poor Tom). Again showing restraint, Director Simon Godwin keeps Edgar/Tom in control, despite the machinations of his bastard brother Edmund (Julian Elijah Martinez). Craig Wallace does a good job as their father, Gloucester, who along with Kent (Shirine Babb) manages to be about the only character who stays true to himself (or anyone else), not that it does him any good.

My main issue with the choices made in the production come with the daughters (who after all are the point of conflict in the script). Between casting, costuming, and some script editing, we know from the outset that Goneril (Rosa Gilmore) and Regan (Stephanie Jean Lane) are very femme, highly sexualized, characters who are united in their opposition to both Lear and Cordelia (Cailen Fu), who never gets a chance to demonstrate the reasons why she was supposedly Lear's favorite. At least with Edmund we get to hear why he is behaving the way he is, though his shifting allegiances come across less as plans and opportunism (as I read the script) and more as kind of stumbling from one chance to another. Ultimately the only motivations left to Goneril, Regan, and Edmund are greed and kinky lust, which cheapens their part of the story considerably. I'm not sure how that sort of misogyny still creeps into a modern adaptation of this play.

The modern setting, other than the weird kinks of the daughters, works quite well. It's kind of a mystery how the one female character who initially shows any agency or power (Kent) got that, and why she then disguises herself as a man for the remainder of the play. It just feels like the gender politics of this ficton weren't thought through very completely.

Bottom Line

As I noted up front, however, a production of King Lear rests on the titular character, and Patrick Page is more than capable of carrying the show on his shoulders. Between his booming voice and his physical virtuosity, he dominates the stage as Lear ought. There is enough strength in his supporting cast to make it work, but Page's voice and body carry the show.

It's fascinating. Weird at times, but fascinating. And well worth the chance to see a master craftsman doing great work, up close.

The show has been extended through April 16th. I suspect it could go even longer if they can keep the cast together. For all the flaws in the direction of the show, the artistry of the key characters still shines through. It's a really good evening of theater. Go see it for yourself.

"As You Like It" at SF Playhouse

 

SF Playhouse production photo by Jessica Palopoli

It's a musical adaptation of a Shakespeare play. Updated with some modern touches.

The Play

It's substantially Shakespeare's play As You Like It, with some extra gender-bending to give it a queer component as well as the gender-confusion that is built into Shakespeare's plot. And much of the script has been edited out, converted into songs in various popular genres to explain the parts of the plot that have been elided.

I found the juxtaposition of the modern songs and the Elizabethan text rather jarring, both from a stylistic standpoint and because the songs are pretty much all expository. As a wise character once noted, "nothing can kill a show like too much exposition."

The Production

The show is for the most part well done. The set design is pretty clean, so we have large spaces to represent the forest or Arden. I think my major criticism of the production itself would be that there is far too much standing around on the set. Someone starts singing, and they and everyone else sort of stand around, unless they happen to be dancing. Director Bill English needed to come up with some better blocking for a lot of the scenes.

And things are a bit heavy-handed when we're dealing with the usurping Duke Frederick. It seems unnecessary to play loud, martial music and have everyone goose-stepping. We get that he's an authoritarian. Of course, the script also undercuts that by having characters refer to him as "Your Duke-ness". WTF? Make up your minds whether we're supposed to take all of that seriously. Don't let the snark overwhelm the message of the show, folks!

Bottom Line

I didn't really care for the adaptation or the production. I thought most of the songs were pretty banal and the presentation heavy-handed. It's as if neither the adapters (Shaina Taub and Laurie Woolery) nor the director thought the audience would understand the show. Yet they kept long passages of Shakespeare's text, and no one got lost. It's not as if the show survived for 400 years by confusing people.

On the other hand, I appeared to be in the vast minority on this one. Most of the audience seemed to enjoy the show immensely. And indeed, it was well done, with a lot of obvious joy on the part of the cast. So I'd give it a passing grade, but not a rave. Seems like it could have been much better, either in the adaptation or in the production (or preferably, both!).

"The Tempest" at Round House Theatre

Round House Theatre production photo by Scott Suchman

 Seriously? I'm going to see The Tempest for the third time in a single year? Indeed. We saw it early this year at the Oakland Theatre Project (before I resumed blogging), and again this summer at Ashland. The OTP production was really interesting, and the Ashland one disappointing. But this promises to be something quite different, in part because I know the work of both co-director/adapters. Aaron Posner is a pretty well-known playwright (I quite enjoyed his adaptation of Chekhov's "The Seagull", called Stupid Fucking Bird) and director, and Teller is half of the brilliant magic act "Penn & Teller". So The Tempest with the prospect of real magic seems cool. Also got tipped off by a friend who saw this production earlier in Boston that it was amazing. So, one more Tempest!

The Play

Really, it's Shakespeare's The Tempest. Edited a bit, of course, but on the whole, it's a very standard text.

The Production

Fresh off the previous night's disappointment at STC, we were mildly concerned about this first foray into the Washington, DC, theater scene. The better-known theaters, such as Arena Stage and Wooly Mammoth, were either dark or doing holiday shows we didn't care to see. But this seemed pretty cool. And it didn't disappoint.

First, about 15 minutes before curtain, Ariel (Nate Dendy) comes on stage in pantomime and starts doing little magic tricks with cards, gradually involving some of the audience. That sets the stage nicely. And what a lovely set! Scenic Designer Daniel Conway and Lighting Designer Thom Weaver have made a beautiful, engaging set that works as both a magical stage and a remote desert island. It's really lovely.

Then the play sets in, and we mostly have a pretty standard (fancy) production of the play, but with little bits of stage magic thrown in. The card tricks seem a bit gratuitous, but I suppose they help with the atmosphere of magic. The other really unique touch is that Caliban is played by two actors (Hassiem Muhammad and Ryan Sellers) who are a single being, speaking in unison, and moving in a way that is both monstrous and elegant. It's like nothing I've encountered before. [Interestingly, the OTP production this year used three actors to portray Ariel, but all acted separately, unlike these two who were a single Caliban.]

Most satisfying, after our disappointment at Ashland, was that this production definitely has a point of view: Prospero (Eric Hissom) is clearly throughout trying to atone for his own past misbehavior. He is never seeking vengeance (much to the confusion of Antonio, played by Cody Nickell).

Bottom Line

It's brilliant. Not perfect, but a wonderful production of a very complex and difficult play. The production itself is beautiful, and the acting (and magic) is really solid, enhanced by the vision of the directors. Choreography by Pilobolus and music by Tom Waits rounds out the production.

This was definitely the antidote we needed for the previous night's disappointment. It's a terrific production of The Tempest by itself, but given its innovations, it's a real treat for those who already know and like the play and want to explore something a little different.

The best news is that this one has been extended, and now runs through January 29, 2023, so you can run out to Bethesda and see it! Highly recommended.

"Lear" at CalShakes

 King Lear and I go way back. It was the first Shakespeare play that I read of my own accord, back in high school, and I wrote one of my essays on the AP English test about the play. And of course, I've seen it performed a number of times. So I was particularly interested when CalShakes announced that they would host the world premiere of a new translation of King Lear, written and adapted by the terrific Marcus Gardley and directed by Eric Ting. This is the same team that brought us the magnificent black odyssey back before the pandemic, so that bodes well.

I'll add a note about the term "translation" here. The play was commissioned by the Play on! Project that began at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival and now exists as a stand-alone non-profit company called Play On Shakespeare. I've always had sort of mixed feelings about the project, which set out to make modern-language versions of all the plays in the Shakespeare canon, presumably without altering the meaning, preferably by restoring the original meaning that might have been lost as the language shifted under the plays.

This play, Lear seems to be a further adaptation of the translation Gardley did several years back as part of that effort. I'm a little unclear as to whether this is the translation itself, or whether that exists as a thing, and then further work went into creating this play for this production.

The Play

I'm not going to try to summarize King Lear here. Suffice it to say the basic, well-known plot of the aging Lear dividing his kingdom among his three daughters based on their professions of how much they love him is still here, along with all the resulting conflicts, madness, eye-gouging, and so on. However (and here is where I have to assume this is the adaptation, not just a modern "translation" of the Shakespearean text), the whole play is set in San Francisco's Fillmore district in 1969, which takes some real imagination to accommodate. The whole cast (but for one member) is black, and the character of Kent is explicitly the countess of Kent, because she needs to be a black woman. This is one of the clear places we have departed the original intent and text. Same when the Black Panthers show up. And eminent domain evictions for urban renewal.

To my ear, most of the language modernizations are fine. Gardley has a good ear and a good writing voice, so his changes there are pretty transparent. I would actually like to see a production of his modern translation of the original King Lear, which is what I thought this was going to be. It wasn't.

A friend of mine summarized the problem rather neatly at intermission, and I'll paraphrase: I would love to see a Marcus Gardley modernizaton of King Lear. I would love to see a Marcus Gardley play that riffs on King Lear to examine the issues of mid-20th-century urban issues. This isn't either one of those, and it doesn't work. Displacement by eminent domain is not the same as a king voluntarily dispersing his lands, or a father favoring his legitimate son over a bastard.

The Production

Here is where I'm struggling to delineate between production matters and matters of the play content. As I just noted, I think the translation of the text is fine, and the acting is generally strong and the technical designs are quite good--simple but not simplistic--things don't have to move around or change much, so the actors are the focus as they ought to be. And I'm pleased that the majority of the actors in the cast are local and quite good. In the current, downsized Bay Area theater scene, any work we can get for these artists is welcome, and it's reassuring to see so many artists I've been missing these past couple of years back on stage.

Any production of King Lear is going to live or die with the actor playing Lear (in this case, James A. Williams). He was generally strong, and has a powerful voice, though I felt he needed to modulate it a bit at times. Lear is a complex character, and a lot of that complexity can come through the variation of volume and tone in his voice. The daughters were generally strong, particularly Goneril (Leontyne Mbele-Mbong) and Cordelia (Sam Jackson). Regan (Emma Van Lare) had a few lapses in her lines, which is hard to take at the penultimate performance in the run. Dane Troy and Jomar Tagatac as half-brothers Edgar and Edmund do a terrific job. Troy particularly works well as "Tom", guiding his blinded father Gloucester (Michael J. Asbery, who has a wonderful, commanding voice). And the always wonderful Cathleen Riddley handles Kent very well, serving as the moral center of the play.

I would be remiss not to mention the excellent, live jazz soundtrack (sometimes augmented by the Black Queen (Velina Brown)) and the overall excellent blocking of the scenes. It's a very effective presentation, with the slight exception of a scene played to the extreme side of the stage, which is utterly invisible to part of the audience in the front rows.

Bottom Line

This feels like a wasted opportunity. With such a good writer and talented artists, this had the chance to be a real landmark production, as we saw with black odyssey. Unfortunately, neither the playwright nor the director seemed to know what they wanted to do, so instead we get a mashup that lurches from King Lear to the Fillmore and back, none of it fitting together. I hope Gardley can go back and find his Bay Area play hiding in the background of Lear. There are certainly enough touchpoints that he could manage it. But trying to incorporate the literal text and plot of King Lear into this completely different scenario is futile, and does a disservice to both.

I'll leave with just a couple of last comments. One of the choices I found inexplicable was the discarding of Lear's fool, who is such a key element of Shakespeare's play. There are lots of ways to interpret the fool, but this play chooses to replace the fool with a stand-up comic (who also sits down in one scene). There's nothing particularly wrong with that, as long as you're not trying to tell the story of Lear. But much of King Lear doesn't make sense without some incarnation of the fool. This strikes me as another case of trying to straddle the translation/adaptation chasm without a clear idea of why or how it will work. It also strikes me that Ting used a similar device (entirely out of whole cloth) in his production of Othello several years back. I didn't think that worked, either.

And finally, the powerful speech that Kent delivers to close the play, which is in some ways the whole justification for making Kent a woman, has the character noting how apt it is that a black woman has to clean up after everyone. That's a great message, but one that is sorely hampered by the fact that the mess in question was largely created by Lear's daughters, who are also black women. Again, a problem that seems to have been created by not knowing what play the writer and director actually want to do.

So I was terribly disappointed in this play. I had very high hopes and expectations, and feel that the artists were not well served by either the writer or the director. Eric Ting, who I deeply mistrusted after he made his CalShakes debut with Othello, had earned my trust with some really good work in subsequent years. Sadly, with this being his final production as he leaves CalShakes, I'm left with a disappointing memory.

I should note that the production closed yesterday, so you'll just have to take my word for it.

Ashland, 2022

 After a two-year hiatus caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, we were finally able to return to Ashland for the Oregon Shakespeare Festival this year. Like all theaters, they are having to come back a bit tentatively, so I have to say the scope of the festival was dramatically less than what we're used to. But it was a treat to be back in lovely Ashland, seeing some of our favorite artists.

So, what's changed?

The two most striking changes in the festival this season were the reduction in the number and scope of the plays offered, and the absence of rotating repertory casting.

The 2022 festival season contained seven total plays, down from the previous eleven. But it wasn't just the number of plays that was reduced. There are fewer performances of each play, and many of the plays are just smaller. For example, one show had a single actor; another had three, and yet another five. This is not a comment on quality--those shows I listed were among the very best we saw. But it reflects both the difficulty of producing a large show when one needs to take precautions to prevent spreading disease and a caution about expending resources on a show when it's uncertain how many people will actually come to see it. The scheduling of the shows was also spread out so that there was no overlap at the middle of the season as there has often been. Some shows ended in July, others didn't begin until August. So it wasn't possible to see all the season's offerings in a single visit. We settled on making two trips, which was fine.

Another victim of the pandemic was repertory casting. Needing to isolate the cast and crew of each show meant that repertory casting was essentially impossible. Overlapping casts and crews would greatly increase the risk of spreading illness across multiple shows, so this seemed a reasonable precaution. It was disappointing to us in the audience, who enjoy seeing actors stretching across a variety of roles. And I imagine it must also have been a blow to the actors who rely on that level of work.

The bottom line here is that there are fewer shows, fewer performances of each, with smaller casts and no chance to be cast across shows. That means a lot fewer opportunities for each artist--a dramatically scaled-down festival.

I should add that another thing that has gone somewhat missing in all this is the festival's eponymous bard: of the seven plays, there were only two Shakespeare works. Although I realize the pandemic necessitated a retreat from the festival's commitment to produce the entire canon of Shakespeare's work in a decade, this pacing suggests that they might be backing away from the canon even more than that, which would be disappointing.

But what about the plays?

Between our two trips, we managed to see all seven of the shows on offer. Of those, I would say two were outstanding, two were very good, and the other three were disappointing on some level.

The best

On each of our visits, we saw one outstanding play, clearly better than the others. For what it's worth, both were in the Thomas Theater (the smallest, black-box theater), but both were ambitious new shows.

unseen

This was the show for the first half of the season in the Thomas. Written by Mona Mansour and directed by Evren Odcikin, it was a west coast premiere. The central character, Mia (Helen Sadler) is a conflict photographer who has been documenting the conflict in Syria when something happens. Her memory has holes, and her ex-girlfriend, Derya (Nora el Samahy), and her mother from California (Caroline Shaffer) try to help her piece together what physical and psychological trauma has landed her here.

The acting, design, and direction for unseen were all amazing. It was clearly the best show we saw on our first visit.

Confederates

After unseen closed, Confederates took over the Thomas Theater, and it's another powerhouse production. Another west coast premiere, this one's by Dominique Morisseau and directed by Artistic Director Nataki Garrett. The writing is just brilliant, with more layers than I can fathom, and the production design brilliantly illustrates the parallel challenges navigated by a modern-day black university professor and an enslaved woman during the American Civil War. We know from Sandra (Bianca Jones)'s opening monologue that this is going to be difficult material, and it is. And while Sara (Erika Rose) demonstrates from her first scene that she well knows the difficulty of staying in line with the masters while still trying to remain true to herself and her family, Sandra's similar conundrums only become apparent as the play progresses.

Using the other actors to portray characters who fill remarkably similar roles in the lives of the two women, on a stage that places the professor's office and the slave shack side-by-side (great scenic design by Nina Ball!), we get a visceral appreciation for both how much and how little has changed over the decades between their lives. I can't do justice to this play in this brief summary. It runs through October 29--go see it!

The next level

Two more shows stood out as being good productions, definitely of a caliber I expect from OSF.

How I Learned What I Learned

This is a show I had seen before (but not blogged about; it was in May, 2019, while I was on blog hiatus). Ubuntu Theater Project (now Oakland Theater Project) co-produced this show with Lorraine Hansbury Theatre and Marin Theatre Company. It's a one-actor show by August Wilson, sort of autobiographically describing his life as a black man in America (or more particularly, Pittsburgh, where he grew up). That production starred Steven Anthony Jones, and he again played the role in Ashland.

I had thought the Ubuntu production was good, though Jones had some lapses. I thought he was much better in the Ashland version: both more confident and more personal. And it didn't hurt to have a bigger budget, so better lighting, a fancier set (also by Nina Ball!), etc. It was just a more polished and convincing production. As noted earlier, a solo show is not something I would ordinarily go to Ashland to see, but the quality of the production was definitely up to their standards.

King John

One of the few Shakespeare history plays I had not yet seen in person (though I have seen a filmed version from Stratford), this was a fairly unconventional staging, directed by Rosa Joshi of the upstart crow collective (who co-produced this), with a cast that is all female or non-binary. After a few minutes, the gender thing just stops being an issue, and you just get into the drama. I have to say that they play (though the ending is a bit weak) holds up very well: it's much clearer, more direct, than most Shakespeare histories. And the cast was really solid, with particular props to Jessika D. Williams as the Bastard (she had impressed me several years ago at CalShakes).

This is another show that is still running, through October 29. If you're making the trip to see Confederates, you can see this, too. Worth it!

The other three

I don't have a lot to say about these. I'll just write about them in the order we saw them. Suffice it to say that none of these would justify a trip all the way to Ashland, but it's not a complete waste of your time to see them if you're there.

The Tempest

I hate putting this on the list of inferior productions, but it belongs there. I love the play in general, and a number of my favorite actors are in the cast. The problems I saw here were directorial. As far as I can tell, either director Nicholas C. Avila didn't know what message he was trying to send, or he didn't figure out how to craft that message out of his actors. But when we saw the show in early July, it had been running for a month, and still hadn't found a direction. Maybe it's better now. I hope so, but I don't have a lot of hope. It's still running, through October 15. But mostly it felt like a waste of a lot of talent, and that's not something I've ever encountered at OSF before.

Once on This Island

This show is very well done. Good music, dancing, energy. Unfortunately, there is no real substance to the story. It's pretty much a story about the happy downtrodden Haitians trying to live happily in the shadow of the colonizing French. And the dream of crossing the racial/class barrier that gets thoroughly thwarted. So it was kind of pleasant, but quite unsatisfying. I'm not sure what the point of this was. Also still running, through October 30th.

Revenge Song: A Vampire Cowboys Creation

I had such high hopes for this one. It's by Qui Nguyen, who wrote Vietgone, which I've seen twice and loved both times. And this promised to be sort of similar, a musical about a queer, swashbuckling woman (Julie d'Aubigny--a real, historical figure), trending toward superhero status. I just feel like the show wasn't ready for prime time. It felt very uneven, maybe unfinished. My expectations of a show at OSF are for something definitely more polished. And it was compounded by the fact that the sound mixing was terrible. Every time actors started to sing with the band, their voices got dropped, making it difficult to hear what they were singing. That's pretty inexcusable.

Again, there's some real talent in the cast and design crew. We even had to postpone seeing this from early July (rain) to September, and it still felt unfinished, and the sound was a problem. That's very disappointing. You, too, can still be disappointed if you go see it before it closes on October 14.

Summing Up

It was awesome to be back in Ashland, both times. The town is much as we remembered it, though a number of businesses did not survive the shutdown, and some of our favorite restaurants have folded. But there aren't a lot of empty storefronts, and new restaurants (some of them excellent) have opened.

That said, we were there for the Independence Day weekend in July, and where Ashland would normally be packed to the gills, there were tables at restaurants, empty seats in the theaters, and parking spaces available. The outdoor theater shows had pretty good crowds, but the indoor theaters felt about half or maybe two-thirds full at best. On a holiday weekend in the peak of their season. When we returned in September (after Labor Day), it was definitely not crowded.

So I have to say I'm concerned about the future of the festival. Fewer shows, lower ticket prices, fewer performances, smaller crowds. All that adds up to a serious drop in revenue. I can only imagine that they must be struggling. And next year's season looks to be much the same: seven shows, including a solo show, only two Shakespeare plays. and so on. I hope by next year people will feel more confident about going out and about, taking trips to see theater and such. Only time will tell.

Revisiting an Old Friend

 I know.

I don't do this anymore. I got tired of the effort it took to produce even a modest-length "review" of the plays I saw, when very few people were even reading the results. I felt bad because I knew a few people, at least, had come to expect my posts, and in truth, I missed writing them.

And then came The Plague, and the Master of the Revels closed all the theaters. In fairness, I had stopped blogging about theater well before COVID-19 was even a twinkle in some Chinese bat's eye. But it soon became clear that not only was my attempt at "Too Much Theater" impossible, but we would all get to experience "Not Nearly Enough Theater" for far too long.

And now things are opening up again, and we're seeing shows in person (the less said about the lessons we learned with online performances, the better, though maybe I'll blog about that someday). But that's not what brought me back here. It was rereading a play.

Searching for a Reading

Last summer, when it appeared theaters were going to get to reopen for real, and we were all vaccinated and excited about life again, my wife and I got to be guinea pigs. A few years earlier at the Shotgun Players' annual gala we had bought the rights to host a private, staged reading, and the reading itself was scheduled for late April of 2020. Obviously, that didn't happen. We had planned to use the beautiful set that Nina Ball had designed for Shotgun's production of Henry V that was supposed to open right as COVID shutdowns hit--they were in tech rehearsals, and never got to open. It was terribly sad for the artists, of course, but I also took it personally as I'd been allowed to sit in on quite a number of their rehearsals, and really felt like a small part of the gang. Plus I really wanted to use that set!

My thinking had been that we ought to do a reading that would take advantage of Nina's brilliant little interpretation of Shakespeare's Globe Theater inside the Ashby Stage, and the play that came to mind was Bill Cain's Equivocation. We'd seen its world premiere at Ashland in 2009 and also when it played at Marin Theatre Company the following year. Terrific play, partly taking place in the Globe: Perfect!

But as the pandemic wore on, that play felt less pertinent in the moment, and we ultimately settled on a reading of Lauren Gunderson's wonderful play, The Book of Will. We had seen it twice in Ashland in 2018, and had been looking forward to it playing at TheatreWorks Silicon Valley in the summer of 2020 before it got canceled. So it was both a chance to give that play a deserved shot in the Bay Area, and also a celebration of the role theater plays in our hearts during difficult times. It was kind of the ideal show to use to reopen the theater after more than a year away, and it, too, is largely set on the stage of the Globe.

So that's all good, but also not the reason I'm writing this.

Old Play, New Context

When we were planning the reading of Equivocation for 2020, I read through the script for the first time in several years. (I have two copies: the OSF script used for the premiere and also the published version--I really like this play!) The play revolves around the premise that in 1605, while Shakespeare was working on his new play about King Lear, the government tries to hire him to write a new "history" play, but this time about current history, specifically the Gunpowder Plot.

This leaves our playwright in a quandary. The king is, after all, the patron of his theater company, and with theaters having been closed by outbreaks of the plague for several years, a commissioned work would be welcome revenue. But the company is divided over whether to accept the task. The play will have to delicately balance the official government line with portrayals of the conspirators and their views. The playwright struggles both with his company and with the government, all while the story of the Plot is still coming to light. Art, truth, and expediency all seem to conflict. Can he write a play that is true and still get it approved? Are we being manipulated? Is he being manipulated?

A Little History Lesson: A House Divided

The years 1605-6 were busy ones in England, but really, for several centuries the whole country had been in nearly constant upheaval. Must of that period is familiar to theater-goers through Shakespeare's "history plays" that cover the period from the early 1300s to the mid-1500s. Throughout those years, England was wracked by questions of succession, usurpation, and the legitimacy of its kings. Even when the Tudor era put an end to the Wars of the Roses, religion came to the fore, and for several generations the country ping-ponged between Catholicism and the Church of England.

Despite a fair degree of adherence to actual history, Shakespeare's history plays both bend history to fit dramatic needs, and also carefully select themes that will pass the approval of his contemporary censors. Not only does Shakespeare have to craft his plays so his audience will enjoy them, but he also needs to make sure the current monarchs will permit the plays to go on.

With the death of Elizabeth I in 1603 and the succession of James I (brokered by Sir Robert Cecil, the Secretary of State), Protestantism seemed well established in England, though there remained devoted, mostly closeted, Catholics (and indeed, Shakespeare may have been one). Jesuit priests were officially banned from the country, for example. And the Protestant King James was not universally loved, both because he was Scottish and because he was deemed a bit of a lightweight in the ruling department, perhaps more interested in the trappings of the office than the job itself. So in November of 1605, a group of English Catholics conspired to blow up the House of Lords (and the king) during the opening of Parliament, an event known as the Gunpowder Plot. Though the plot failed, the event was used to justify further restrictions on Catholics, and to this day the anniversary is commemorated as Bonfire Night.

So, then: a deeply divided nation, tenuous leadership, and a scandalous attempt to overthrow the government. And even in the aftermath, conspiracy theories that agents of the crown might have aided the plot, knowing they could exploit the event for political gain.

The Play, Then and Now

Cain originally wrote Equivocation in the aftermath of 9/11 and the ongoing Iraq War, and the themes of government coercion and propaganda, lies, torture, and conspiracy theories all resonated strongly. Exploiting a national tragedy to unite divisive factions, even if the story doesn't quite ring true, was a big theme of the play.

The parallels with 9/11 were quite clear at the time, with a big, violent event used to pull the nation and the world together, with threats of further terror used to justify curtailing travel, increasing surveillance, and eventually, invading foreign countries. One can easily equate the incidents and the responses to them--that was certainly palpable when I saw the play in 2009-10.

So in late 2019 I re-read the play to make sure it would still feel timely a decade later. And boy, was I surprised to find that it resonated in whole new ways! The play hadn't changed, but the social context for the audience was very different.

In pre-pandemic America, the notion that the government might be trying to rewrite (or even, pre-write) history was all too credible in the land of "alternative facts" and "fake news". An unqualified new head of state, pulling the levers of the Deep State, manipulating stories and perhaps even staging them--all terribly familiar in the Time of Trump. Cain's exploration of the role of Truth is even more fascinating that it had been a decade earlier, and honestly, the ambivalence of the answers are even more poignant in the current environment.

It was truly eye-opening to see how a play that had been so rich and timely when it first came out was in many ways even more on-point in a dramatically different world ten years down the road.

And that was all before January 6, 2021. I mean, how much more pertinent can we get? An actual insurrection attempting to overturn the results of a presidential election is right up there with putting gunpowder in a tunnel under the Parliament. And the spin doctors casting doubt on everything and everyone--motives, actions, words--everything is up for grabs.

All I can say is that I continue to be amazed at how prescient Cain was in his writing. But really what that means is that he wrote something really good: a piece of work so deep and complex and real that it provides a framework for gaining insights into future conditions that change over time.

Nerdy Shakespeare Notes

Aside from the deep issues addressed in Equivocation, there is a whole layer of "inside baseball" material for the Shakespeare enthusiast. On top of his background as a Jesuit, playwright Cain has strong credentials from his work with Shakespeare's plays: founder and artistic director of the Boston Shakespeare Company, he has also directed Shakespeare plays from coast to coast. So this play is full of playful nuggets that appeal to Shakespeare nerds.

In addition to the delightful digs about Shakespeare's acting ability and his penchant for killing off his characters (and particularly, kings), Cain intertwines history with his own story in at least three different ways. One obvious one is the character of his daughter, Judith. There is no evidence of them having anything like the relationship depicted here. A second is the family rivalry with the Cecils. Although scholars have long linked Robert Cecil's father, William, to the character Polonius in Hamlet, I believe Cain's linkage of the younger Cecil to the Scottish Play is entirely novel. In any case, the snarky digs and clever creations make Equivocation a treasure trove for a Shakespeare nerd.

Why Do We Do This?

I will admit that a few bits of the play seem less timely, or at least less urgent, than they did before. The debate over torture and its use and abuse as a tool of investigation is no longer front-page news, for example. But the bigger dynamics at play--government versus private interests, art as a tool for finding (or obscuring) truth, artistic integrity, fathers and daughters, entrenched dynasties--all still work delightfully.

And ultimately, this is what all literature, all stories, all art should be about--holding up a mirror to our current selves so that we can investigate who we are and what we think, feel, and believe. And that's not a one-time offer. Revisiting a book or a play or an artwork isn't just a way to reinforce something already known or have the same experience again. To paraphrase Heraclitus, you can't step into the same story twice. It's reopening the learning. It might reinforce, but it might replace or adjust or augment what came before. There is always value in revisiting stories.

My first viewing of Equivocation was a milestone for me--both the play and the production were eye-opening, and it's been a touchstone subsequently as I think about plays and the theater. Reading it, and hopefully seeing it again lets me both re-evaluate what I recall I got from it the first time and experience new reactions as well. Even if it's the same story, I'm not the same person, and this is not the same world, and there will be new thoughts to think.

Of course, not every piece of art deserves all this much attention. Part of the ongoing reimagining of theater today deals with pruning some works from the canon and introducing new and different ones. I'm all for new works and new voices, but it's important to remember why some of the classics are genuinely classic, and why some modern works are better than others. Some repay ongoing study with rich rewards, and I'm pleased to find that Equivocation seems to fall in that category.

"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.

"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.

"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.

"The War of the Roses" at Cal Shakes

Cal Shakes photo by Kevin Berne

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

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

The Play

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

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

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

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

The Production

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

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

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

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

Bottom Line

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

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

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

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

Stratford Festival 2018

Festival Theatre and swan. Stratford Festival photo by Krista Dodson

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

What am I doing in Canada?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Bronté: The World Without

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

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

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

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

Paradise Lost

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

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

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

Coriolanus

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

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

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

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

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

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

A Comedy of Errors

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

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

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

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

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

An Ideal Husband

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

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

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

Reflections on the Festival

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

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

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

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

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

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