Z/Web

Author: Penny Metropulos

This is absolutely the worst production of any kind I’ve ever seen in over twenty years of attending the Oregon Shakespeare Festival in Ashland. My frustration stems from the fact that I wasn’t warned this was a radical departure from the original script. If I’d come prepared for something different my reaction might have been different. As it was, I was devastated.

The most major flaw in this production is that it makes too many changes. Sometimes changes are good: they can refresh a tired play, modernize it, bring forth a new perspective, make you see it in a new light. But this version attempts far too many radical changes and utterly destroys anything worthwhile in the original play.

The first change is that this uses a Western setting, moving the characters from Europe to the American Wild West. If that had been the only change, this could have succeeded brilliantly. Unfortunately, the director (or directors, as this felt like several conflicting collaborators were involved) chose to all make this a musical. Yes, that’s correct: a musical. The production is filled with music that is not even in Western style, with modern lyrics that don’t use Shakespeare’s poetry, and songs that don’t make sense or add to the production at all.

Now I’m not anti-musical. I love musicals, if they are done well. This was not. While some of the songs were well sung, only one was even slightly memorable, and the rest were indistinguishable from each other. Worst of all, there was no point to these songs. Do cowboys spontaneously break into song? Yeah, that’s what I think about when I think of the Wild West… cowboys singing.

Another flaw was the bizarre introduction of multiple ethnicities into the play. For example, the play was narrated by a Mexican mariachi singer. He often spoke rapid Spanish and his English was so accented he was difficult to understand, ruining the whole point of adding a narrater character. Also included was a Chinese man with similar flaws of speech who strangely read modern-sounding fortune cookie fortunes. Another character was made into an Italian tonic-seller, an awkward combination of immigrant and classic Western quack who seemed utterly out of place and useless.

Through-out the piece modern language was mixed with Western terminology, so that along with with ethnic languages, the audience is expected to follow and understand a confusing variety of styles: Shakespearean poetry, Western drawl, modern singing, Mexican Spanish, Chinese English, Italian English, etc. The result is that it was a real challenge to understand anything: I had to concentrate hard to follow the play, which reduced the humor considerably as I couldn’t relax.

It didn’t help that about half the actors were obviously cast because of their singing abilities rather than their ability to perform Shakespeare. That doesn’t mean they’re bad actors, but performing Shakespeare does require a different kind of talent (making poetry sound like natural speech). This cast butchered what little Shakespeare was left after the changes and additions; I could hardly hear or understand them much of the time, and in an identity farce like “Comedy of Errors” that is not a good thing.

In short, this was a disaster. I laughed exactly four times during the first half, and once in the second. I had not thought it could get worse in the second act, but it did, dwindling into a horrible vaudeville act of slapstick and exaggerated “comic” reactions. It just was not funny. I kept wanting to laugh, but the play gave me nothing. The few times I did laugh were all due to Shakespeare’s witty dialog, not anything new to this production. The fact that the biggest laugh of the night came from someone in the audience sneezing in the silence before the second act shows how everyone was filled with pent-up laughter wanting to be released. (Some people liked the slapstick or the songs, but I was so depressed by the desecration of Shakespeare that I couldn’t enjoy anything. It was merely excruciating, like watching vandals destroy your most prized possession and being helpless to stop them.)

If I’d been warned that this play was so radically different from Shakespeare’s original I might have come prepared and been less critical. I’m sure I would not have liked it, but at least I would not have felt cheated. As it is, I feel betrayed by OSF — they sold me tickets to William Shakespeare’s “Comedy of Errors” and gave me no Shakespeare, no comedy, only errors.

Author: Thorton Wilder

It’s has been a while since I’ve seen this and it’s one of my favorite plays, but for some reason this particular OSF (Oregon Shakespeare Festival) production left me a little flat. I’m not sure if they made some subtle changes that didn’t work me as well, or if the impact the play had on me the first time was so extraordinary that subsequent viewings would always pale in comparison. Overall, this was excellently done: the acting was superb (with several known stars such as the VP from Boston Public and even the “Log Lady” from Twin Peaks). Some of the pantomime was weak: one tall man leading a cow kept patting the cow’s head well above his own, making the cow something like nine feet tall! A few other places didn’t have too much emotional impact for me — I think the Emily character was weakly done — but overall the play itself is a fascinating look at small town life and the way life meanders. Recommended despite a few flaws.

Author: Arthur Miller

Fascinating play by Miller that’s one of his best but least known. It’s set in working class New York City in the immigrant community in the 1950’s (I think that’s the timing) and deals with subtle interpersonal relationships between families and visitors. The main story is about an uncle who dislikes the immigrant boy his neice his seeing and reports him to the authorities so he’ll be deported, a shocking betrayal of the community. This was an excellent OSF (Oregon Shakespeare Festival) production.

All I knew about this musical is that it had something to do with the film “Monty Python and the Holy Grail.” It turns out it’s basically the film turned into a stage production: the same lines, songs, and classic jokes. This could have been disappointing, except the stage version is different with some new songs and some amazing production values and little inside jokes. One of my favorite things was the role of the “Lady of the Lake,” a minor character in the original that gives Arthur Excalibur and makes him King of Britain. In this version, the Lady’s a diva, and after not seeing her for a while, in the second act she comes out dressed like a lounge singer and sings “What Ever Happened to My Part?” with hilarious self-absorption and jabs at her agent for getting her such a sucky role. Awesome!

I really enjoyed this. It was simultaneously new and familiar, totally hilarious, informal, cool, and fun. It really fit my mood as with sensory overload from my travels I’m not sure I could have handled a serious play.

Now this Ashland, Oregon’s Shakespeare Festival play really overwhelmed me. It was amazing. It’s a somber topic: a couple coping with the loss of their son eight months earlier, but done in such a way that there is tons of humor and entertainment. The drama sneaks up on you occasionally through the humor and it’s powerful. What impressed me the most was the realistic modern dialog which was flawless and natural, with every character hitting just the right notes. The play is about how we each cope with grief differently and the phenomenal acting conveyed that perfectly. We meet the younger free-spirited sister who is pregnant and unmarried and we see how that tortures the wife who lost her child. We see the father and husband who wants to move on but can’t because his wife won’t: she’s at a different grief point than him. Then there’s the wife’s mother who lost a child of her own twelve years earlier, but as her daughter tells her, “It’s not the same thing” because her son was only five years old when the car hit him. Most powerful of all is the teenage boy who ran over their son — purely an accident but tormenting none-the-less. All this sounds dreary and somber but it’s not: the play is funny and clever and hilarious, but at the core is the horrible thing always lurking that no one wants to talk about. Just brilliant. Winner of the 2007 Pulitzer Prize. I had a terrific front-row seat and was a hand-stretch from touching the actors at times. Chilling and amazing.

I love Chekov but I was slightly disapointed by this play at Ashland, Oregon’s Shakespeare Festival. Nothing much happens in it. It’s about a rich Russian woman who’s squandered all her money and the family must sell their beloved (but neglected) cherry orchard to save the estate but she refuses to see it. It’s about how people react (or refuse to react) to change. There are a few side romance storylines and some good humor and the performances were good, but I wasn’t wowed.

Definitely one of the best productions with some phenomenal acting. The story seems extremely complicated and intimidating but it’s really not. Basically King John has taken over power and there are questions as whether or not he’s the rightful king. Some think his 9-year-old nephew has a stronger right, so he orders the boy killed. The boy is not actually killed, but the King thinks he was and grieves and struggles with his quest for power. His heart soars when he learns the boy was not killed. But meanwhile the boy, depressed, kills himself, and when the King finds the boy really is dead, his health deteriorates. It’s a sad, somber play that deals with serious questions, and with wonderful speeches and drama, is highly recommended for viewing. Surprisingly, even though it seems steeped in complex history, this was the easiest of all four plays I saw to follow!

A superior play and production, with a fantastic set of tree silhouettes in the background, brilliantly lit for different moods: sunset, cold winter, dark night, etc. The play is one Shakespeare’s most melodramatic and fanciful, with a magic ending. The plot deals with a king who becomes convinced that his wife has been unfaithful with his best friend, and despite everyone trying to convince him otherwise, he refuses to believe her baby is his and he orders her executed. This so upsets the gods that sixteen years of winter follow. Meanwhile, the king’s daughter is not dead — she has been hidden away and is now a beautiful sixteen year old, and of course is ready to be romanced by a prince, except that she’s not royalty — until, of course, it’s revealed that she is, and with her father remorseful and delighted to discover his daughter is alive and well, all is forgiven and happiness is restored. I really liked this play and the forced happy ending as the absurd elements fit together well. Great job and some really amazing acting by several characters.

Easily the worst of the plays at the festival this season. It’s mostly silly, but the exagerations of the performances seem to demean and take the play even lower than it should be. I also have a serious objection to an OSF policy of being racially blind during casting. While I certainly don’t think race should be a main factor in casting, it should be considered when characters are related. This play has a lot of characters already and I was completely confused when a black daughter had white parents and other racial confusions — I didn’t understand some of the relationships and had characters confused even after the play was over. This really hurt a lot of my understanding of the play and left me quite frustrated. If I could have asked for my money back, I would have on this issue alone, as I thought the production was shockingly poor. It’s just all confusion and trivialities.

This was a play where the production was better than the play itself. The play is a light comedy without much substance; it’s about two friends (the “gentlemen” of the title) who are easily wooed. One, after getting engaged to his girlfriend, promptly falls for his friend’s newest girl and tries to break them apart. Meanwhile, his girlfriend disguises herself as a male servant and spies on him, with, of course, much hilarity. What was ingenius about this production was the clever modern visuals. For instance, when the boy first meets the girl, she and her friends and family are all preppily dressed for a tennis match (they are, after all, the elite of Verona, so it fits). As the play continues, we see them playing crocket, getting massages at the spa, etc. The modern settings through you for a minute, but are delightful and refreshing. My favorite was the bandits of the forest who are all dressed as goths and punks!

There’s also a key roll played by a real dog, where one of Shakespeare’s most colorful characters has hiliarious conversations with the dog. So overall, this was excellent. My only complaint was the poor performances by the two gentlemen, who, especially at the beginning, delivered Shakespeare lines in wooden voice as though reciting poetry. Quite shocking that they should be so bad; they did better in scenes of interaction, though I still felt it was a bit of bad casting.

Of course it’s a terrific play but I was really impressed by this performance, which got a lot of fresh humor from non-vocal scenes. (For instance, the butler, setting a table for tea to the tune of piano playing off-stage, was hilarious.) I wish we’d had time to see other plays, but at least I got to see this one.

Author: Henrick Ibsen

An amazing play about a bizarre, incomprehensible woman. Hedda is a newlywed who returns home with her husband, George, a boring academic who spent their seven-month honeymoon doing research. They’ve purchased a large house beyond their means, apparently because Hedda expressed a fondness for the mansion, but in truth she doesn’t like it, but now that her husband bought it for her, she must lie in the bed she made (there’s a significant pun in there). Bored, Hedda begins to manipulate the people around her. There’s a girl from her childhood who’s flightly and weak, who has left her husband to pursue a lover. That lover turns out to be Hedda’s former lover, and a man who’s competition to George: he’s in the same field and is working on a new book. George reads part of the book and thinks it’s brilliant, one of the best book’s ever written, but when the drunken author accidentally drops it, George recovers it. It’s the only copy. But before he can return it, the guy goes nuts, thinking someone stole it, and his violence ends him up arrested. When he’s released he goes to see Hedda, who encourages his sucidical thoughts — even giving him one of her pistols! She doesn’t tell him she has the manuscript and when he leaves, she burns it. Why? Good questions. She tells her husband it’s because of her great love for him and he believes her, though he’s horrified at the loss of such a great work. News comes that the author is dead, though not exactly the way Hedda expected. In the end she’s blackmailed and caught with the prospects of a husband she doesn’t love and forced romance with a blackmailer, she shoots herself. The end.

This is a play about questions, not anwers. The questions are many and fascinating. Why does Hedda marry George? Why is she so bored? Would anything satisfy her? Why does she waffle, changing her mind so frequently? Does she even know what she’s doing herself? Why is the play’s title her maiden name instead of her married name? Why does she keep seeing visions of her father? Why is she so jealous (if that’s what it is) of the other girl? (Hedda is beautiful and shouldn’t be jealous.) Why does she kill herself in the end? Was life so unbearable to her? Or was it guilt? The answers to these questions are not impossible, but they are subjective: everyone who watches the play will have to form their own conclusions, and every production interprets the play in their own way, making for a fascinating experience. Granted, Hedda’s incomprehensive behavior does make her difficult to like or relate to, but she’s fascinating. Most of the other characters are also severely flawed: the husband’s a simpleton, the author tempermental, the girl an idiot, the judge a corrupt blackmailer. The only innocent in the bunch is old Aunt Julia, virtual mother to George, but she’s not a main character. That lack of compassionate characters does make the play more difficult to connect with, but I still liked it. It’s a fascinating intellectual exercise. I’d actually like to see if again a few times: there’s enough depth here to study for a long time.

Author: August Wilson

Of the three plays I saw this weekend, this was undoubtedly the best. However, it was not perfect. It’s an amazing play: Wilson won a Pulitzer Prize for it in 1990. It’s about a Black family in 1936 Philadelphia. A wild brother shows up from down south, ready to sell the family piano. He and his sister co-own it, but she refuses to sell it. He needs the money to buy a farm so he can control his own destiny. But the piano has a history for her family: their slave ancestors were bought with that piano, and it was paid for with their sweat and blood. The sister won’t play the piano, however: it’s haunted with too many memories. She also won’t marry, still stuck on her husband who’s been dead for three years. Thus the conflict brews. Meanwhile there are ghost sightings, and it turns out the piano really is haunted, and in the end, the sister must overcome her fears and play it, which (apparently) banishes the ghost… and her brother, who leaves peacefully without the piano.

Plotwise, there’s not too much to this story. This is a play all about the characters, and they are amazing. The varied personalities are all strong and bold, presenting plenty of conflict, and none are alike. Each has obvious good and bad aspects, just like real people. There’s tons of humor, as the outrageous situations are unusual and funny, yet that’s tempered with genuine drama, as the piano represents serious emotional baggage. I loved the play, the characters, the presentation, and the acting was astonishly good, but I found myself waffling over the whole ghost thing. Unlike the ghost in

I drove up to Ashland, Oregon this weekend to see some plays at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival. First up was this one, about the controversial Spanish poet, Fredrico Garcia Lorca. The description of the play intrigued me, but while the execution was superb, the play itself was flat. The description promised Daliesque surrealism and that was certainly present. The play is about Lorca waking up after he’s dead and in a sort of limbo, a 40-day quarantine, during which he’s to reflect on his life and become convinced of his own death. A series of actors dance around him, reenacting various scenes from his life: childhood, on the beach with Dali and his sister, the courtroom trial where he was accused of being a Communist, his death being shot by soldiers, etc. As Lorca struggles to remember and understand, we learn more about him. Unfortunately, despite the weight of the material, the play isn’t especially illuminating about death, Lorca, or anything else: it uses the conceit to bring in surrealistic imagery and concepts, but doesn’t deal with the deep philosophical issues it brings up. There are no answers here, and very few questions. For instance, I was surprised to find no mention of God in the entire play! For a play about the struggle between life and death that’s a striking omission. Even if Lorca didn’t believe in God, he surely would be questioning that belief when he wakes up dead! Instead the play’s mostly about drama and presentation, or “shocking” the audience with revelations such as Lorca’s homosexuality. That said, the play’s not bad: the set’s awesome and there’s some wonderful imagery and the acting was excellent. But we don’t really get to know Lorca that well, the surrealistic presentation distances us from him emotionally, and the lack of depth in subject makes for a weak play. It’s possible that my lack of knowledge about Lorca hurt my interpretation; a Lorca fan would probably get much more out of this.

A much better production. The costumes were modern, but consistent, so they made sense. I loved that Julius Caesar was dressed as the Godfather. Hilarious (and quite brilliant)! The only weak part was the role of Mark Anthony, which is key to the production, was performed by a non-actor. The guy wasn’t the worst actor ever, but he wasn’t outstanding, and if there ever was a role that needs an outstanding actor it’s Mark Anthony (the play is essentially conflict between Brutus and Anthony). The actor who was Brutus was excellent, a terrific actor, but the second half of the play, which features Mark Anthony more, was much weaker. The guy even blew some of the best and most famous lines of dialog, screwing up the “lend me your ears” speech! Fortunately, everyone else was good enough to minimize the impact of the poor Mark Anthony, but I was still a bit disappointed. The play was still worth seeing, however. I liked the production and direction, and Brutus was awesome.

After the play ended, at about midnight, my cousin and I drove home to California. We arrived in Oakland about 5:30 a.m.