away in a Shakespeare
Jun. 22nd, 2025 09:04 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
calimacThis year's driving visit to the Oregon Shakespeare Festival was a bit precarious, due to both B. and I being ill at various times (just a cold, but nasty enough). B. missed two plays as a result - fortunately not the best ones. I didn't miss any plays, but undertaking the six hour drive there after a night when the cold had given me no sleep was a grim business which shouldn't have been attempted.
There were six plays on our schedule, three Shakespeare:
As You Like It: utterly charming, clever, good-humored, imaginative, a delight in every way - and performed with utterly pellucid line-readings. Everything everyone said was clear and understandable. After a stark court setting, with everyone in antiseptic white, the Forest of Arden burst out as sixties hippie utopia, with everyone in it, from Duke Senior on down, dressed as flower children - except for the melancholy Jaques, who was a leftover beatnik poet in a shabby black suit. Aw, perfect.
Julius Caesar: another production by the upstart crow collective of female and nonbinary performers. The central characters of Brutus and Cassius were good enough but might have done better with the casting exchanged; but Caesar (Kate Wisniewski) exuded arrogance and self-confidence, perfect for the character. Nonspecific modern dress.
The Merry Wives of Windsor: a more conventional production than OSF's last Merry Wives, this didn't tinker with the text or add musical interjection; here the characters expressed their emotional reactions by screaming a lot. An attempt was made to frame the plot around the crafty plans by the merry wives, but this could have been more focused. The costumes were livelier: Falstaff and his cronies first sauntered in as a biker gang, and things just got sillier from there.
and three not:
The Importance of Being Earnest, Oscar Wilde: The director couldn't identify with Victorian England, so set this in the Victorian English colony of Malaya, which had little effect outside the vegetation in act 2 and the place names, which didn't make much sense. (The casting was multiracial, which would lead to genetic impossibilities in this play, so you just ignore that.) Never mind the place names either: the acting was great. Newcomer Hao Feng made a splendidly foppish Algy, and Kiki deLohr as Gwendolen mugged her way through, channeling Miss Piggy.
Into the Woods, Stephen Sondheim and James Lapine: Supposedly a revival of OSF's 2014 production which we saw, and with some of the same cast, it wasn't the same at all. With much less of the bursting clever imagination of its predecessor and a more improvisationary feel, it was just a good solid performance of Into the Woods that succeeded in making Act 2 more involving than Act 1 instead of more dour.
Fat Ham, James Ijames: Starts out as a very funny and clever resetting of Hamlet in a rural Southern Black family holding a wedding reception barbecue. The Ghost, who is still figuring out how to be one, was particularly amusing. Lots of specific Shakespearean points well translated into Black vernacular. But the author didn't want to kill the characters off, so the plot makes a turn into a closing celebration of former uptight Marine Larry (= Laertes) coming out as a drag queen. Good for him, but something of a nonsequitur in the circumstances.
There were six plays on our schedule, three Shakespeare:
As You Like It: utterly charming, clever, good-humored, imaginative, a delight in every way - and performed with utterly pellucid line-readings. Everything everyone said was clear and understandable. After a stark court setting, with everyone in antiseptic white, the Forest of Arden burst out as sixties hippie utopia, with everyone in it, from Duke Senior on down, dressed as flower children - except for the melancholy Jaques, who was a leftover beatnik poet in a shabby black suit. Aw, perfect.
Julius Caesar: another production by the upstart crow collective of female and nonbinary performers. The central characters of Brutus and Cassius were good enough but might have done better with the casting exchanged; but Caesar (Kate Wisniewski) exuded arrogance and self-confidence, perfect for the character. Nonspecific modern dress.
The Merry Wives of Windsor: a more conventional production than OSF's last Merry Wives, this didn't tinker with the text or add musical interjection; here the characters expressed their emotional reactions by screaming a lot. An attempt was made to frame the plot around the crafty plans by the merry wives, but this could have been more focused. The costumes were livelier: Falstaff and his cronies first sauntered in as a biker gang, and things just got sillier from there.
and three not:
The Importance of Being Earnest, Oscar Wilde: The director couldn't identify with Victorian England, so set this in the Victorian English colony of Malaya, which had little effect outside the vegetation in act 2 and the place names, which didn't make much sense. (The casting was multiracial, which would lead to genetic impossibilities in this play, so you just ignore that.) Never mind the place names either: the acting was great. Newcomer Hao Feng made a splendidly foppish Algy, and Kiki deLohr as Gwendolen mugged her way through, channeling Miss Piggy.
Into the Woods, Stephen Sondheim and James Lapine: Supposedly a revival of OSF's 2014 production which we saw, and with some of the same cast, it wasn't the same at all. With much less of the bursting clever imagination of its predecessor and a more improvisationary feel, it was just a good solid performance of Into the Woods that succeeded in making Act 2 more involving than Act 1 instead of more dour.
Fat Ham, James Ijames: Starts out as a very funny and clever resetting of Hamlet in a rural Southern Black family holding a wedding reception barbecue. The Ghost, who is still figuring out how to be one, was particularly amusing. Lots of specific Shakespearean points well translated into Black vernacular. But the author didn't want to kill the characters off, so the plot makes a turn into a closing celebration of former uptight Marine Larry (= Laertes) coming out as a drag queen. Good for him, but something of a nonsequitur in the circumstances.
no subject
Date: 2025-06-22 10:54 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2025-06-23 01:40 am (UTC)I hadn't heard of "Fat Ham" before, but now I want to see it.