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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.
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.
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.
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.
My family just spent two days visiting Ashland, Oregon to attend the 
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.
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.
