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Oregon Shakespeare Festival
By Lynn Ruth Miller
Things on stage should be as
Complicated and as simple as in life.
-Anton Chekhov
The mission of the Oregon Shakespeare Festival in Ashland, Oregon is to create fresh and bold interpretations of classic and contemporary plays in repertory. It is one of the few theater companies in the country to operate in the black. It never fails to convince us that theater is not only alive and well but necessary food for a culture as diverse as ours. The company is off to a mixed start this year. As always, the acting is right on target in every production. The sets, costumes and technical details are spectacular and professionally done. But those elements, important as they are, do not make a play. We need a little bit more. We need pace and substance.
Richard III opened this 2005 season in the Bowmer Theater and in all productions I have seen of this stirring, thought provoking play, I have never seen a more human portrayal than James Newcomb's interpretation of the role. He is arrogant, yet needy; edgy and hateful… a man whose sprit will not allow him to succumb to his physical infirmities. Director Libby Appel waited fifty years to direct this play and she says, “In his direct soliloquies to the audience, Richard is in turn funny, even charming; then suddenly, before our eyes, he becomes despotic …perhaps not unlike how Hitler and Mussolini must have seemed to their massive audiences.”
This Richard is audacious, loveless and unloved; a whirlwind of a man who can speak to the demons buried in all of us. He is as physically crippled as he is emotionally. Newcomb uses his crutches with great dexterity not just to move from one place to another but as weapons against those who defy him.
He is so real it is difficult to imagine him as anything but this twisted human being whose physical ugliness has poisoned his character and his kingdom. Yet even as we hate him, we cannot help but admire his audacity and his immense effort to ignore and defy his disabilities.
The problem with this particular production lies elsewhere. Other than Queen Margaret, the widow of King Henry VI, played to eerie perfection by Robin Goodrin Nordli, the other characters lack the strength and conviction Newcomb gives his role. The scenes are overly long and weaknesses that would be easily overlooked if the pace were better became glaringly obvious.
No matter. It is well worth every moment of this three-hour production to see James Newcomb’s Richard. He cannot receive enough bouquets for his characterization of a tormented man determined to be greater than life.
Robert Schenkkan’s bittersweet romance, By the Waters of Babylon was meant to be the highlight of this opening weekend of the festival but for me it
lacked sparkle and originality. The play was written for two of OSF’s
finest:, Catherine Coulson and Armando Duran. Once again the actors could not be faulted. When I listened to Duran speak, it was as if he were framing his own ideas in words only he would say. Catherine Coulson can never be anything but delightful but her role was just that: a part in a play. It lacked the veracity that Duran brought to the production only because the audience was not convinced of her suffering nor did it buy her the brittle repartee.
The script held no surprises. There were no unusual plot twists or unexpected reactions; nothing a but a soap opera theme about a cultured, educated, intelligent and sensitive man posing as a gardener meeting a woman who seemed shallow and callous because of the horrible suffering her late husband inflicted upon her. You can see the end moments after the first
scene opens. Both characters reveal their true selves as the play
progresses until they bond and try together to heal the wounds of the past.
The two gems of the season were The George Bernard Shaw delight The Philanderer and a farce for all ages, Room Service.
George Bernard Shaw can be tedious and wordy at best, but director Penny Metropulos added a Music Hall flavor to the action that kept everyone eager for more. The story pokes fun at our ideas of what makes a woman womanly and a man masculine. “A philanderer is a man who is strongly attracted by women,” says Shaw. “He flirts with them, falls in love with them, makes them fall in love with him, but will not commit.” Derrick Lee Weeden as this particular philanderer is beyond perfection. He combines veracity with wit and captivates us completely. We cannot help but see the logic in his very Shavian observations about men and women and the way they love. The cast is superb, the costuming outrageous and the story too true for comfort.
The play that proves that humor has no time line is Room Service originally produced in 1937 on Broadway and as appealing to audiences today as it was
when it opened. “Comedy is a remarkable invention of the human
imagination,” said director J. R. Sullivan.
“When it works, it’s all passion and delight.”
This production works on every level. The cast obviously is having as good a time as the audience as they exaggerate the show business world in the thirties when Broadway was pure entertainment. The play has it all: mistaken identity, repetitive tag lines, mixed up motives and an unexpected ending when Sasha played by Eileen de Sandre that master of exaggerated characterization made real steals both the show being produced by the cast and the show itself.
This play is a diamond; one that hopefully sets the tone for the quality of plays yet to open. Napoli Milionaria! Eduardo de Filippo's Italian gem set in World War II opens in July and The Belle's Strategem a hilarious romp by Hannah Cowley in July in the Bowmer Theater. The New Theater will add Ma Rainey's Black Bottom in March and Octavio Solis's Gibralter in July, a world premier drama commissioned by OSF. The outdoor theater will feature Shakespeare's Twelfth Night, and Love's Labor Lost and Marlow's The Tragical History of Doctor Faustus all opening in June.
For more information or to order tickets: www.osfashland.org; 541-482-4331
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