juushika: Screen capture of the Farplane from Final Fantasy X: a surreal landscape of waterfalls and flowers. (Anime/Game)
I just spent a few days with my mother & father in Ashland, seeing three plays:

Henry V: Excessive, modern dance-y choreography; better minimalist set design than Henry IV 1 & 2; Daniel José Molina is, again, phenomenal as Henry—pulled off the comedy unexpectedly well—a full, human, complex portrayal; Rachel Crowl as understudy for Pistol was a delight—the depiction & fate of all of Henry's old gang was devastating (even Fallstaff's entirely off-stage death), but Crowl especially brought a physicality and dimension to a character I normally dislike. This was my favorite of the three, I cried a good handful of times, it is even better alongside recently reading the Henriad in our Shakespeare project.

Othello: Aggressively, unproductively over-blocked—this showed worst in Iago and while I understand the intent (to clarify the language & make the play more accessible) it should've been toned down; also wish there weren't 23049 loud & excitable schoolkids in the audience; perhaps too much comedy. But my real complaints aren't complaints per se; rather, they're that this play, especially in 2018, is miserable & exhausting & supremely unsatisfying. No one learns anything, there's no catharsis. The last third was hard to watch, most especially Desdemona's prolonged death scene.

An interview afterward with Chris Butler, who played Othello, helped provide some of the closure the play denies; I asked specifically about depicting racism/xenophobia alongside misogyny/violence against women, about finding a balance that doesn't allow one—and here I mean the misogyny—to overwhelm the other, to be more accessible and sympathetic, particularly to OSF's particular demographic of progressive but majority middle class white folks; his response was considered and conflicted: to make the play intentionally multicultural in order to explore Otherness a complex issue rather than something (if you'll excuse) black and white; to emphasize all forms of discrimination, to refuse to allow anything to be buried, to broadcast it all even when it involves discrimination within and between minority groups.

(My dad, who attended the interview with me, was struck by how my question brought the discussion to a standstill, to how thoughtful was Butler's reply. This is about 98.5% paternal affection, but tbh I appreciated that paternal affection. My dad doesn't care about Shakespeare, he attends the plays because my mother and I care about Shakespeare; his investment is in my investment.)

Destiny of Desire: inspired by & effectively a condensed telenovela, dense with mistaken identities and ridiculous plot developments and meta-commentary, and social commentary specifically about Latinx community/identity and its intersection with class. Absolutely a gimmick; but a fun, engaging one, ridiculously compelling and quite charming; the audience was enraptured. Not perfect! not in love with the queerbaiting in particular. And I couldn't imagine seeing something like this more than once a year; it's A Lot & not to my personal taste. But a fun, successful experiment, and I'm glad this was our end-note. (I <3 the "rewind" gimmick for particularly !!! moments.)


We stayed at an Airbnb—my first—and it was homey and clean; but the wifi was what I would forgivingly call "unreliable" & the pull-out bed I slept on was. bad. probably bad under any circumstances & for any body, but double plus ungood for my particular back. All these things are a lot for me to handle: seeing and internalizing three plays; two nights of increasingly bad sleep, and three days of back pain and sun exposure; being in close contact with my family while my dad is ill, in the same location we were when he got sick/right before his cancer diagnosis. All three of these things at once was too much.

My dad's done with the immediate chemo treatment; he's now on an experimental inhibitor through a trial out in Pennsylvania. He's dealing with fading chemo side-effects while acclimating to new medication side-effects, and hasn't yet had the appointments which will determine if the meds are working/not working/if we have no idea but keep taking them!—the waiting and doubt makes the side-effects worse. This continues to be the best possible version of events, but in a worst case scenario: it's still terminal. So it's just a lot to be around that. Small things develop bizarre repercussions and meanings. (On our usual tour of downtown he impulse-bought me a moleskine—and last year we saw the same one and none such thing occurred to him—and is it end-of-life impulsiveness? it's a red moleskine (I've always wanted one of the color ones), and when I fill my current one he will be dying, dead—will it always be on my shelf the bright red moleskine, the Dead Dad moleskine, wrapped in memories of a grief and crisis that I can't even begin to imagine? everything is this, is laden, is an omen; it's exhausting.) It's all exhausting.

Plays, body, family all at once was too much & today the gravity feels higher, I feel denser and slower, small things are an effort. I'm still glad I went—as always, the profound disinclination that I felt right before departure was counterbalanced by the good experiences that these visits always are; I'm grateful they've been inviting me, and I treasure these Ashland trips. But now I give myself a week to Be Potato & try to recover.
juushika: Drawing of a sleeping orange cat (Default)
Hamlet, Elizabethan Theatre, dir. Lisa Peterson

A fairly standard staging with a few exceptions, largest of which is the use of doom metal—the gravedigger stands atop the stage with a guitar, providing ambient audio; some soliloquies and sung lines are done with a mic. I buy this conceit in theory, but it failed to impress in practice. It muddies some lines ("To be or not to be" is so famous as to have become clichéd, so I understand choosing to mix it up via mic and audience participation—but what a flop) while adding little of substance besides ambiance.

But the casting is almost universally phenomenal, the characters so well-rounded. I took some issue with Claudius (maybe only an issue of costuming: the bulky crown on his bald head looks silly and exaggerated—exaggerated obsession with power, exaggerated evil) until 4.7 when he, with ruthless political acumen, invites Laertes to murder Hamlet. Ophelia's song's beautiful, and easily the best (and most natural) inclusion of music. Polonius! is phenomenal! this character needs to be the fool, comic relief with a grain of truth, and he needs to be lovable because his death must to be a loss big enough to mark a turning point within the play—this is that, most especially 1.3 "these few precepts" which is both officious and sincere. Horatio as a Black woman is brilliant, and she's the emotional strength and center, directing the audience's emotions through the loss of the cast. And: Hamlet. I have touched on this briefly elsewhere, but this is the Hamlet I dream of, a Hamlet large, who contains multitudes; a Hamlet of sincerity and performance, of flippancy and bereavement, consumed by a toxic self-knowing and yet so self-possessed. This script keeps both of my favorite soliloquies: 2.2's "O, what a rogue and peasant slave am I!" and 4.4's "How all occasions do inform against me," and they were all I could have wished for: a Hamlet obsessed with how others perform grief and action.


Twelfth Night, Angus Bowmer, dir. Christopher Liam Moore

This production has two interesting directorial choices: it's set in 1930s Hollywood, and Viola and Sebastian have the same actor. I was initially doubtful of the first and ridiculously excited about the second; they both work, often because of how they interact with one another. In the reunion scene, a single actor is able to play both Viola and Sebastian because a screen descends and a projected black and white film version of the actor portrays the non-speaking twin; even better, the actor then steps into the projection, the twins embrace, and the actor exists the film-within-the-play to portray both of the roles simultaneously. Twelfth Night generally resolves its own queerness* by ending with heteronormative pairings; this defies that, it keeps the fluid orientations and queer subtext alive until curtains. The 1930s conceit is successful because it helps pull that off; also because the social and sexual freedom of the era well suits the content of the play.

I was impressed by the handling of the B-plot. There was some clever staging—separating the left and right sides of the stage into the A and B plot, one side of the stage going dormant while the other had a scene, with Feste thematically and physically knitting the halves together. The B-plot is given as much depth as the A-plot, but the character depth and growth in Toby in particular is never not allowed to overshadow the unforgivably harm done Malvolio, who I have also discussed elsewhere: what a sympathetic, unforgiving depiction of his experience, his growth, his anger. I'm not fond of physical comedy, and this has a lot of it; beyond that, what a well-cast and well-considered production. Attending a talk by an actor (who was equally passionate about Malvolio and about queering the text!) only made it better.

* moreso now than then, when crossdressing Viola was originally played by a male actor


The Wiz, Elizabethan Theatre, dir. Robert O'Hara

I can't separate the experience of this production from the production itself, because there just was that much rain, But the energy of the cast defied the weather. This is engaging and lively and not all that deep. Allow me to quality that: this is valuable in historical context, and still valuable now, for the all-Black speaking roles and also for the body-type diversity in the ensemble. The playful, irreverent, flamboyant tone is is engaging and alive, and the costume design (what we saw under ponchos!) is phenomenal, especially in the backup dancers, especially the birds. But beyond celebrating a new ownership and audience, it doesn't provide much as a retelling of the source material—feel-good songs, no particular reinterpretations or depth.
juushika: A black and white photo of an ink pen (Writing)
Well is not a play about the playwright and her mother. Well is "a multicharacter theatrical exploration of issues of health and illness both in the individual and in a community." Playwright Lisa Kron puts her chronically unwell mother on stage and hires four actors in order to revisit the desegregation of her childhood neighborhood and her own time spent in an Allergy Unit, but as the play begins to disintegrate around her she scrambles to pull together fragmented memories and repressed emotion in order to eke out meaningful themes on the issue of wellness. Performed at Oregon Shakespeare Festival's 2010 season, Well is a performance of great intention and middling success. Split the play into approximate thirds, and it goes like this: a unique but initially ineffective concept, an unexpectedly successful evolution, and a hasty and disappointing conclusion. That middle third hides some wonderful gems, but the entire play is something of a disappointment.

Well is as much about the constructs of a play as it is about issues of family, wellness, and race, and so it opens with play-acting running concurrent to the living room "real world" where Lisa's mother sits. Significant time and energy go into establishing the unusual premise, which makes for an intriguing but unsatisfying beginning. The play within a play is exaggerated—brightly colored, over the top, and farcical—and you could call it "stylistic suck" because these rowdy, unrealistic scenes often tread the line of aggravating (and on a personal note the farcical humor left me cold, making these scenes all the worse). But when the constructs of the play first begin to crumble, Well reaches a golden period: it slips back and forth between "real" and "play," breaking character, interweaving stories, and throwing the audience into a thoughtful, meaningful tumult of confusion and concept. This is when it realizes it finest moments—which sometimes come too hard, fast, and clearly delineated, but still ring with meaning and truth. These moments address issues which are close to my heart, and so I found Well to be at times personally meaningful; viewers without this connection may find these moments well-realized but perhaps not as moving. Regardless, it is this middle period that shines. It excuses the lackluster beginning, but suffers in the play's troubled conclusion.

For as it continues, Well's constricts continue to disintegrate and this golden period also crumbles. The fallacy of the play is destroyed one too many times, and the effect is ironically unbelievable. In part, this is because, while Well makes the laudable effort to avoid a simple, neat conclusion to its heavy, complex themes, it unfortunately settles on a trite, short conclusion which does its themes no service and undercuts the brilliant moments achieved in the play's middle period. As a whole, however, I expect that Well is different—and much better—when Lisa Kron stars as Lisa Kron (as was the case for many East Coast productions). In that case, when the play dissolves completely Lisa is there to stand—stripped to nothing but a woman in a bright light—as her authentic self. Such is not possible in this OSF production, so when the last foundations of the play crumble, no authenticity is revealed beneath: the protagonist remains an actor. Metatheatre is an unruly beast: it has great potential which it finds difficult to achieve, perhaps because—ironically—it gazes so hard at its own navel that even as it disregards the false trappings of theatre, it loses any sense of universality and timelessness. So it is with Well: Well takes on too much—play constructs, family issues, health, and race make for an overfull platter, and racial issues in particular go underaddressed; what is addressed sometimes displays a glimpse of something meaningful, but is often wrapped in a busy, messy, if well-intentioned setting which never quite convinces. I applaud it as a brave and complex effort, and appreciate some of its themes and messages, but I came away with troubles and a sour taste. Ultimately, Well is a failed effort, and I don't recommend it—but I will quote from it.

LISA: Hi, Kay.

KAY [an Allergy Unit patient]: Hello

LISA: Is your cousin coming to pick you up?

KAY: No. My sister.

LISA: That's good.

KAY: Yeah, I guess it's good.

LISA: No?

(Kay slams something down on the bed.)

LISA: Do you think you're having a reaction?

KAY: I don't know. Maybe. I guess.

LISA: Do you want me to go get you some alkali salts?

KAY: No. Lisa ... it's not fair. I don't want to be sick. My sister is cleaning my house for me, getting my safe room ready. She is good to me, but I can't help it. I don't want her going through my things. Oh, I don't know, I don't know. I'm not reacting. I'm angry. I'm so angry, Lisa. I know she thinks if she were me she'd be better, but do you know what the problem is with being sick? It's that you're sick. People who are healthy think they know how you could get better, because when they imagine what your life is like they imagine having your sickness on top of their health. They imagine that sick people have all the resources they do and they're just not trying hard enough. But we don't. I don't. I know my sister is only trying to help me, but I can't help it. I think, You suffer for one day the way I do. I want you to feel like this for just one day. Then you tell me how to get better.


(Photo: Lisa introduces her play in the "play" section of the stage; in the background, her mother sits in the "real" section. By Jenny Graham, copyright OSF.)
juushika: Screen capture of the Farplane from Final Fantasy X: a surreal landscape of waterfalls and flowers. (Anime/Game)
Georg Nowack and Amalia Balash, coworkers at a parfumerie, have a contentious work relationship—but they are also one another's secret pen pals who met through a lonely hearts newspaper ad. When the pen pals decide to meet, Georg discovers Amalia's identity and everything he thought he knew is thrown into turmoil. This familiar story is the fifth adaptation of Miklos Laszlo's play Parfumerie, and it's a musical. The Oregon Shakespeare Festival's 2010 production of She Loves Me is, in a word, delightful. It's by no means flawless: The plot is slightly bloated by the romantic foibles of another parfumerie employee, whose quest for love is intended to function as a foil to the relationship between Georg and Amalia but instead feels underdeveloped and contributes the musical's worst numbers. The production, meanwhile, falters at the close of the first act, when the café meeting scene becomes a rancorous, physical comedy. She Loves Me is something of a subdued musical—not quiet precisely, but the characters are realistic and a little dorky, the romance is more private than grand, and so the loud comedy comes as a surprise and feels out of place in the otherwise understated production.

But these are small, forgivable distractions in view of the entire production, which is joyful, clever, and a pure pleasure to watch. It doesn't offer remarkable depth—it is, after all, a romantic comedy, and though the romance is enduringly unusual the story doesn't break much new ground and it comes to such a swift conclusion that it almost feels simplistic. But the musical offers brilliantly funny, catchy songs about topics as mundane as shopping and eating ice cream, the main characters are refreshing in their simple and adorably flawed humanity, and the production's clever set design, colorful costuming, and strong musical performances are a joy. OSF's new trend towards musicals has had a rocky start, but with She Loves Me they meet their usual standard of excellence. My entire party loved this play without reservation. A joy from the second song (the first is good, but the second is great and it's where things get rolling) to the ovation's refrain, this is not OSF's biggest, best, or most brilliant production—but it may be one of the most enjoyable to watch. I recommend it with enthusiasm.

(Photo: Georg interrupts Amalia while she waits for her "dear friend." By Jenny Graham, copyright OSF.)
juushika: A black and white photo of an ink pen (Writing)
My family just spent two days visiting Ashland, Oregon to attend the Oregon Shakespeare Festival. We go every year (more than once a year), and it is one of my favorite places in the world. Saturday afternoon for a near-packed matinéee performance, we saw Shakespeare's Hamlet. (Pictured is Hamlet, to the right, deciding whether to slay Claudius, to the left. By Jenny Graham, copyright OSF.)

It's difficult for me to separate my love for the production from my undying love for the script. To be fair, the best script can be ruined by poor performance, and even OSF has done it. (I refer specifically to last year's production of Macbeth. Macbeth is my favorite of Shakespeare's plays, perhaps my favorite piece of literature, but the 2009 production was my worst experience with OSF. I never wrote a review, but this Oregon Live piece describes some of my issues: it was a frantic production, rushed and loud, which felt made for TV rather than theatre—all the way down to questionable special effects. It did a disservice to the script by adding in lines and chopping out others, gender-flopping without considering the impact of gender roles, and playing fast and lose with casting; it destroyed the tone by playing much of violence and madness with humor, which stripped away the play's gravity and its horror and without those—well, what's the point of Macbeth? But this review isn't about that production—it's about this year's Hamlet, which was much better.)

Such a strong, recognizable script as Hamlet gives a production an immediate step up, and as long as the production doesn't do that script a complete disservice then it probably won't be bad. But Hamlet isn't "not bad." It's amazing. It isn't perfect, but this is a strong, smart play with wonderful acting and some of the best interpretation of Shakespeare's most famous lines that I've ever had the privilege to see.

The star—and rightly so—is Hamlet himself, played by Dan Donohue. Prior to seeing the play I heard another theatre-goer describe it as Shakespeare's darkest comedy. I wouldn't always agree, but for for this production I do. Donohue draws out all of Hamlet's humor: the comedy of his madness, his personal insults, and the double-entendres of his language. It's clever humor rooted deep in the script and blossomed through stage direction, and it endears Hamlet to his audience swiftly and deeply. The humor and tragedy don't always find a perfect balance (and as a result, the last two acts of the play—the graveyard humor (5.1) followed by the tragedy of the swordfight (5.2)—rub a bit roughly against each other), but often they do, and even when tragedy is underexplored Hamlet's personal struggles never fail to shine. Shine indeed is the optimal word: brilliant spotlights highlight Hamlet during his soliloquies, all of which are wonderfully dissected, paced, and delivered; here Hamlet shows that the intelligence which gifts him with such sharp humor also curses him with constant complicating thought and introspection. Acting and directing carve out a very specific delivery, and they make the play's most famous, oft-quoted lines seem new again. I've never seen a more engaging Hamlet. He perfectly walks the line between independent and accessible: his struggles are personal and private, but—as is the play's greatest strength—every viewer can understand them.

Read more: Polonius, setting and stage, disappointments and concerns. )

These are small complaints, no less valid for being specific but still not major disappointments. OSF's 2010 production of Hamlet is undeniably strong. It's smart, it's careful, it's sensitive, and while not all its risks turn out to be successes, more often than not they do—and none of them overshadow the production's brilliant portrait of Hamlet's character, of his thoughts and doubts, of his attempted actions. What a wonderful start to the season, and even better that it's playing all year long. Go see this play (and I hope I'll have the chance to do so once more before the year is out).

I'm aware that this review is probably longer than most people will bother to read, but I had a delightful time and it's been too long since I talked Shakespeare (or reviewed a play!), so I just can't help myself. This is OSF's 75th year and they have a lot of great plays running and coming—we also saw Cat on a Hot Tin Roof and while I may not take the time to review it I loved it too. If you have the chance to get there this year, I urge you to go. I'm looking forward to our two more visits of the year.

Along the lines of writing and epic posts, I've lately been playing with IOGraph, which maps mouse movement and delights the hell out of me. Following is a picture of my mouse movement while writing this post (dots indicate mouse stops, lines indicate movements). Total recording and writing time: 3.5 hours. Click through to view notes (of what the graph indicates) and to view larger.

IOGraph of...
juushika: Photograph of a stack of books, with one lying open (Books)
The second play that we saw in this short trip to Ashland was one that I knew nothing about but the author before seeing it: The Further Adventures of Hedda Gabler. The playwright, Jeff Whitty (Avenue Q), is a cousin of a family friend. In all else the play was foreign to me. OSF is only the second theatre to show this play, and it is largely undiscovered. We saw a matinée on a Friday with a much quieter crowd—and I loved it. The premise is meta-tastic and somewhat absurd: after committing suicide at the end of her play, heroine Hedda Gabler awakes to find herself trapped in the fictional character's afterlife, condemned to repeat the life of her play until her story dies, and she sets out find herself a new ending.

(Picture at right is by Kim Budd and copyright the Oregon Shakespeare Festival. It features Medea "doing it again", Hedda in the middle, and at right slave Mammy.)

The Further Adventures of Hedda Gabler by Jeff Whitty. )
juushika: Screen capture of the Farplane from Final Fantasy X: a surreal landscape of waterfalls and flowers. (Anime/Game)
On our recent trip to Ashland, my mother, father, and I saw two plays. First, and an evening performance, was Midsummer Night's Dream. It was a Thursday night, and there were many visiting high schools (and some younger) come to see the performance. Of course Shakespeare is my true love, and so I was most excited to see this play. However, this was Midsummer with a twist: set not in Elizabethan England or Athens, the play takes place instead in the American 1950s-1970s.

(Picture at right is by Jenny Graham and copyright the Oregon Shakespeare Festival. It features Fairy Queen Titania and Fairy King Oberon.)

A Midsummer Night's Dream by William Shakespeare. )

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