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| go to lobby page | more reviews | go to other departments | GLENN LONEY'S SHOW NOTES
By Glenn Loney
[01] Bard on the Boards atAshland
Caricature of Glenn Loney
by Sam Norkin.
[02] Eight Plays in Four Days
[03] Feast of [Good] Will
[04] "Much Ado About Nothing"
[05] "Henry IV/Part II"
[06] "Othello"
[07] Alex Dumas' Adapted "Three Musketeers"
[08] Henrik Ibsen's "Rosmersholm"
[09] Bert Brecht's "The Good Person of Szechuan"
[10] August Wilson's "Seven Guitars"
[11] Octavio Solis' "El Paso Blue"
[12] Shakespeare South of the [Oregon] Border
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For our archive of Glenn Loney's previous 1999 columns, click here.
SHAKESPEARE IN LOVE—WITH ASHLAND!
The Bard on the Boards
The Bard isn't the only course on the Ashland Festival Menu. But it all began with Good Old Will back in 1935.
At The Oregon Shakespeare Festival:Angus Bowmer—a teacher at what is now Southern Oregon University—was asked to stage two Shakespeare plays as part of a Fourth of July celebration. These festivities also included pony-races and boxing-matches.
Planners believed costs of mounting the plays could be covered by profits from the other attractions. In the event, the results were just the opposite.
Bowmer staged "Twelfth Night" and "The Merchant of Venice." And the Oregon Shakespeare Festival was on its way.
Bowmer was such a believer, in fact, that he called it the First Annual Shakespeare Festival. Most promoters would have waited a year or two before invoking Annuality in their titles.
Over the years, other notable Elizabethan and Jacobean playwrights were introduced on "America's First Elizabethan Stage" to steadily increasing audiences. Many of whom had not even read the dramas, let alone seen them previously.
With the construction of the large indoor Angus Bowmer Theatre—and later the intimate black-box Black Swan—modern classics and new plays were added to the program.
In 1998, the OSF proudly brought its production of a provocative new play it had commissioned to the nation's capital. To the John F. Kenedy Center, and to great acclaim.
The play was Lillian Garrett-Groag's "The Magic Fire." It was nominated for a Best New American Play award, but I'm not on the play-reading committee, so I don't know how it fared.
When—or if—you go to Ashland, you can see an interesting video about the trip to DC and how the play was prepared for performance in the Bowmer Theatre. As I've never read nor seen this apparently amusing drama—which seems to be about eating dinner—I cannot tell you what it is really about.
Time magazine's Richard Zoglin included Garrett-Groag's drama in his Ten Best of 1998. He characterized it thus: "In Péron's Argentina, a family of refugees from Hitler's Europe is jolted into a realization that history may be repeating itself."
I wish they'd made a video of the actual production. The capsule reviews I've seen of this staging make it sound a spectator-must.
Stay Four Days, See Eight Plays!
In the good old days at Ashland, banners on the lamp-posts advised: "Stay three days—see three plays!"All the dramas were performed on the broad open stage of what Bowmer was pleased to call "America's First Elizabethan Stage." It was—and still is, after various recreations—broadly based on scholarly conjectures regarding outdoor stages on London's South Bank in the time of Good Queen Bess and her successor, the son of Mary, Queen of Scots.
[Having been one of many who worked with the late Sam Wanamaker to help make the new/old Globe Theatre on the South Bank a reality, I can attest to the difficulties of establishing a reconstruction of the original or its replacement, the Second Globe.
[Thanks to Sam, however, I was able to photograph the foundations of the Rose Theatre before it was again interred with the construction of the high-rise Rose Court building. And Sam showed me the excavated corner of the actual Globe foundations on the former site of the Courage Ale Brewery. The remainder of these sacred stones lie under a landmarked 18th century terrace building, alas.]
In 1935, Bowmer's improvised stage was incredibly rustic and crude. In San Diego, at the same time, there was a World's Fair of sorts, celebrating California's Hispanic Past, but also featuring Thomas Wood Stevens' Old Globe Theatre, with tab-versions of the Bard's dramas.
As this same structure had already been used in 1933—at Chicago's Century of Progress Exposition—Stevens could certainly have refuted Bowmer's later claim of a First. It was also seen in 1936 at the Texas Centenary.
In fact, San Diego's Old Globe, still producing Shakespeare on its boards, periodically challenges the Oregon Shakespeare Festival's Elizabethan Primacy. But San Diego had a much longer production hiatus than the OSF, during and after World War II.
[If the history of American Shakespeare Festivals is of any interest, there's a good—but long out-of-print—book on the subject: "The Shakespeare Complex," published by Drama Books.
[One summer, I roamed America, visiting all the Shakespeare Festivals I could for an issue-long report in "Theatre Crafts." My editor & publisher, Patricia J. Mackay, covered a few I didn't reach. But we had so much material we decided to make it into a book. There are so many more festivals now, it's time the book was either updated or replaced by a new look at Shakespeare on American Festival Stages.]
Obviously, with only an outdoor stage, Ashland's Shakespeare season was strictly seasonal. And, as audiences increased, people who were just driving through the beautiful Rogue Valley in peak season had to be turned away.
Plays could only be effectively performed in the evenings; Ashland afternoons were much hotter than in Elizabethan London. Bowmer also insisted on uncut playing texts and no intermissions. This was a real test for older viewers.
With the opening of the Angus Bowmer Theatre in 1970, it became possible to accomodate many more spectators. And to offer indoor matinees and eventually to extend the season from February to October.
There was even a Ski & See program in which students and teachers from other communities and states could come for a week of skiing, study of the Bard's works, and play-going in the evenings in the Bowmer.
Banners were changed to read: "Stay Four Days, See Four Plays!" Followed by: "Stay Six Days, See Six Plays!"
At its high point in midsummer, this OSF season will offer no less than eleven plays, old and new, classic and not-so-classic. They include: "Much Ado About Nothing," Henry IV/Part II," "Othello," "Pericles," "The Three Musketeers," "Rosmersholm," "Chicago," 'The Good Person of Szechuan," "Seven Guitars," "El Paso Blue," and "Tongue of a Bird."
Season 2000 is forecast thus: "Wit," "Stop Kiss," "Force of Nature," "Crumbs from the Table of Joy," "Night of the Iguana," "The Man Who Came To Dinner," "Taming of the Shrew," "Twelfth Night," "Henry V," "Hamlet," and "The Trojan Women."
In 2001, which is when the new Millennium is actually underway, the American Theatre Critics Association will hold its annual conference at the festival. ATCA has been there before, in 1985, when the Oregon Tourist Board also showed the critics the state's breathtaking southern coastline. Salmon and scenery earned exclamations, as did the OSF productions.
ACTA was doubly welcome in 1985, for its members had voted a Tony nomination in 1983, which was confirmed by the American Theatre Wing's Tony Awards Committee.
Who knows? There might be another Tony waiting in the wings, after drama critics from across the nation have seen the new work in Ashland!
If you want or need to know more about Shakespeare in Ashland, especially about booking tickets and accomodations during this summer and early fall, call: 541-482-4331. Or check out the website: www.orshakes.org
In the meantime, here are some impressive facts & figures:
· 1998 total attendance of 354,147.
· 1998 budget of $13.7 million, 79% of it earned income!
· 1998 economic impact—"trickle-down" effect—of $87,777,600.
· 1998 season played 762 performances.
· 1998 season had 88% of all seats filled.
· Nation's largest professional regional theatre company, employing some 450 actors, dancers, musicians, directors, designers, technicians, and administrators.
· School visitation program covering more than 275 schools, with performances and wsorkshops for more than 165,000 students in seven states.
· Volunteer staff of almost 850!
Feast of [Good] Will:
Ashland seasons now open indoors in February, in the Bowmer and the Black Swan. But way back when the Elizabethan Theatre was the only game in town, the summer season always opened with the Feast of Good Will. This was one of Angus Bowmer's good-natured puns.Today, this annual eating-event is more simply but suggestively titled "The Feast of Will." That can be short for William, but it can also describe a display of power.
Thus far, most of the power is generated by the appetites of playgoers, hungry for barbecued chicken. But it also takes a lot of lung-power to fill the air-sacks of the traditional Scottish bagpipers who entertain the feasting crowds in Lithia Park.
Bowmer was a Scot, and the pipers rallied to him for Festival Premieres. Even though the Bard's interest in events north of the River Tweed are largely confined to his "Scottish Play," the presence of the bagpipes and their kilted players now seems firmly established in Ashland.
All that is needed are T-shirts with such slogans as: FREE WILL! or WILL POWER!
"Much Ado About Nothing"
Although the Festival itself maintains a high artistic profile, nothing prevents some of Ashland's merchants and service-providers from descending into Terminal Elizabethan Cuteness.There is an As You Like It Guest-House, for instance. I looked about for a Much Ado About Nothing Motel but didn't find one. At the current prices for rooms, such a name would be most appropriate.
In fact, good old Leonato seems to be operating one in this curious Shakespearean comedy. He invites not only the victorious Prince of Aragon and his principal officers to lodge with him, but also the Prince's recently vanquished enemy and brother, the Bastard Don John.
Before the play—which is one of the three being presented on the open-air Elizabethan stage—there was a theme-related free Green Show outside on the lawn between that theatre and the indoor Angus Bowmer Theatre.
In former times, these Green Shows were of the hey-nonny-nonny variety, with recorders, lutes, and merrie Morris Dancers. Now, each great-stage production has its own themed Green Show.
"Much Ado" was preceded by a consort of dumpish Hidalgos, playing and singing what I took to be old Spanish songs. These were visually accompanied by five ballet dancers who could have certainly perked up many a production of "Carmen.
But what possible connection could this standing-room-only show have with "Much Ado"? Shakespeare didn't write either "Don Quixote" or "Fuente Ovejuna," after all.
Nor does "Much Ado" feel especially Spanish. But the presence of the Prince of Aragon must explain the choice of a Green Show titled: "Mucho Ruido Para Nada." You can surely figure out the translation.
Kent Dorsey's "Much Ado" set-decorations and lighting don't seem very Spanish either. Given the basic fixed facade of the quasi-Elizabethan stage at Ashland, different locations for different plays—or changing scenes in a single play—are achieved with various set-props and with specific constructions on the central sliding pavilion in what some scholars call the Inner-Below stage.
Dorsey has tarted up the stage with garlands of very fake flowers: on a pergola, on arched arbors, around the stage-house pillars, and on the balcony. To make the scene even more flower-spattered on occasion, he has provided some roller-shades with floral images which wouldn't be out of place at a K-Mart SuperSale. Tacky.
But this is certainly superior to that recent Royal Shakespeare Company production which had only a few overhead white screens which could be lowered to suggest garden walls and hedges. Beatrice's skittering behind imaginary hedges, "like a lapwing," was taking place on an open, exposed stage. So much for Postmodernism.
As staged by the OSF veteran, James Edmondson, there isn't a whiff of the modern about this new production.
Except, possibly, bringing on the dastardly villains, Borrachio and Conrade, in festive attire to join in the general merriment at the restoration of the presumably defunct heroine, Hero.
In most other productions, one assumes they will be put to death, chained in the galleys, or transported to New Spain. But certainly not invited to enjoy the double weddings of Claudio & Hero and Benedick & Beatrice.
Over many years of countless Shakespeare productions, I have seen more stagings of "Much Ado" than I can recall. And yet, I still find the central story of the false accusation of Hero and her public disgrace—and apparent death—distastefully painful in its awkward abruptness and contrivance.
But then so is King Leontes' abrupt, brutal, and wrongful repudiation of Queen Hermione in "Winter's Tale." Elizabethans obviously responded to such plots and moral dilemmas quite differently.
And they surely accepted quite as abrupt reconciliations with an ease moderns find harder to muster. At least, in this play, as in "Comedy of Errors" and others, audiences are spared the complete recap of the plot—promised on stage by some worthy priest or abbess to the rest of the characters—after we have gone home.
The true heart of "Much Ado" is the comic conflict between Beatrice and Benedick, tricked into falling in love with each other. Indeed, in some eras, the play has borne their names. And even been somewhat shorn of its major plot.
[Hector Berlioz knew his public when he created an operatic version of the fable and called it "Beatrice and Benedict." This premiered long ago at the Grand Theatre in Baden-Baden, in case you were wondering.]
Mark Murphy is a wonderfully smart, tart, cute, and deluded Benedick. Elizabeth Norment, as his foil and tormentor, Beatrice, gives as good as she gets. But her delivery is sometimes too sharp, too old-maidish bitter, to suggest that she is really an eligible candidate for marriage, especially to the resolute bachelor Benedick.
Helen Qizhi Huang has had a field-day with the costumes for this show. Most memorable are the fantastic outfits she has created for Dogberry, Verges, and the rest of the Watch. They constitute a visual farce in their own right!
The women are handsomely attired in gowns which range from quasi-Renaissance to early Edwardian. But for the second—and much more socially successful—marriage of Hero and Claudio, Huang designed a Mexican Day of the Dead Masque.
It could be argued that those fantastic skeletons in men's sombreros and broad-brimmed women's hats—which are almost a trademark of the distinctively Mexican Cult of the Dead—have very little to do with the Aragonese.
On the other hand, prior to this nuptial, Claudio and the Prince have been publically mourning and singing epitaphs at Hero's Family Monument. So, on the following day, when he is to marry her "cousin"—and she is in fact reborn to him and the world—it is oddly appropriate that she and Beatrice should be disguised as images of the dead, among Hero's women.
Claudio and Benedick have to choose—among the five skeletal figures—which are the real Hero and Beatrice. And it's a nice touch in the Far West, where there was a Spanish and Mexican presence long before there were Shakespeare Festivals.
For the nobles and officers, Huang has confected smart uniforms which evoke the Italian Rissorgimiento. They could be re-used in "All's Well That Ends Well." [And someone in Ashland could salute the revival of that comedy by opening an All's Well Bed & Breakfast!]
"Henry IV/Part II"
"Support Our Boys" and "King Henry Wants You!" banners and posters would be all very well in a cleverly updated production of this instalment of the tragical history of the contention of the Houses of York and Lancaster.Indeed, this OSF staging opens with the cast as chorus, dressed as if they were ready to occupy Belgrade. Remnants of this Army Surplus Store gear survive as the play progresses.
But they are increasingly supplanted by the rich gowns and gleaming silver armors of a quasi-Plantagenet period. These fine garments and guerdons look much more at home on the Elizabethan stage. And they help the actors to play very grandly—and often to conceal the fact of double and triple-castings.
As directed by Libby Appel and designed by Richard L. Hay, Susan E. Mickey, and Robert Peterson, this staging is always attractive to the eye and fairly fast-paced.
Appel has added the crowd-pleaser of casting men in the few women's roles, followng the lead of the Royal Shakespeare Company and other sensation-seekers. This occasions some rowdy knockabout farce—rather too much of it, in fact—in Mistress Quickly's bawdy-house.
The noble ladies in the drama are played with a proper hauteur, but the comic roles border on crude drag-queen routines. These of course always delight the broad spectrum of American audiences. But you wouldn't want those noisy queens living next door.
Justice Shallow and his cousin Silence, on first sight, seem richly comical. This is largely thanks to the fantastic hats and wigs devised by Susan Mickey. Their comic sparring with the richly human Sir John Falstaff of Ken Albers rapidly becomes fussy and tedious, alas.
The comic scenes often border on the sophomoric—always a danger in Shakespeare. One shudders to think of these amateur clowns playing the Rustics in "Midsummer Night's Dream."
Instead of being a constantly anticipated relief—and counterpoint—to the grander issues of the Wars of the Roses, the comedy seems too drawn out. One longs for some armor and battle-flags to replace them as soon as possible.
Fortunately, the nobles and their vassals do not descend to the "Beyond the Fringe" level of "Ha, saucey Worcester!"
The Prince Hal of this production seems rather lightweight when first encountered. He hardly seems the rowdy, lusty young royal who has been brawling in taverns and the stews with fat old Sir John.
Indeed, he would make a most comely, charming Rosalind, if the OSF decides to do "As You Like It" with an all-male cast. But Clifford Williams already did that years ago.
He does strive for a more majestic tone and bearing at the close, but it comes close to bluster when he delivers the borrowed St. Crispin's Day speech from "Henry V." If you don't know where this tacked-on speech comes from, you may be morally elevated by it—but also mystified.
This brief Preview of Coming Events emendation, I learned from Dramaturg Barry Kraft, is indeed a prequel of the "Henry V" production planned for the OSF's Season 2000.
What I would never have guessed—not having seen their "Henry IV, Part I"—was that the Army Surplus seen in the opening chorus is a kind of visual tag left over from that staging. For those spectators who know neither "Henry V" nor "Part I," or even those who do but did not see the prior production, this is more confusing than resonant.
Othello"
I stand—or sit—amazed! This is the most effective production of "Othello" I have ever seen. And I have seen a great many over the years, including Olivier in blackface.Derrick Lee Weeden, as Othello, is more powerful, more convincing, and more pitiable/admirable than any of the famed African-American or Anglo-African Othellos I have admired in previous productions at home or abroad.
That he was also, only the day before, so utterly moving and convincing as August Wilson's crazed old Hedley in "Seven Guitars" makes his achievement as Shakespeare's Moor even more impressive.
But, in a strange way, I'm even more impressed with the Iago of Anthony Heald. Weeden is of course overpowering. But Heald is very much his match.
What makes this worth noting—to me at least—is the fact that Heald has so often been seen in New York in blander, more modern roles, which he plays very smoothly.
At Ashland, his very interesting Pastor Rosmer seems almost an extension of that blandness. I did not know he was capable of such power, fury, and passion as he displays as Iago.
He seems almost a different actor. Had I not read the program, I wouldn't at first have recognized him in the role. He is in this production a very physical, muscular, violent villain.
Having seen some merely competent productions directed at Berkeley Rep by Tony Taccone, I was also not prepared for the brilliance of his "Othello" staging at Ashland. It is memorable, and I found myself following the unfolding of the tragedy as if seeing it for the first time ever.
That of course is largely owing to the passion and conviction of the major characters, including Amy Cronise as a lovely but too fondly loving Desdemona. And Robynn Rodriguez as an outraged and valiant Aemelia—when she finally perceives the depths of her husband's villainy.
Clearly, Taccone has been strongly assisted by John Sipes, for the fight-sequences are tremendously exciting—and the entire production seems to move as if choreographed.
This in no way detracts from the violence of the sword-fights, or the physical encounters between Othello and Iago. This production is not an elegant pageant or Ceremonial of Love & Death. Though it does have some almost Japanese ritual elements in costume, setting, and movement.
The fencing-excercise, during which Iago drives home the suspicions of Desdemona's infidelity, is a masterpiece. As the tension increases, the parries and thrusts grow more violent. One fears Othello might lose his iron control at any moment.
When Othello seizes Iago and splashily forces his head underwater—to make sure he's telling the truth to him—Iago seems in danger of drowning.
An extended rectangle of water on the forestage suggests both the canals of Venice and the seacoast of Cyprus. Designer William Bloodgood has otherwise avoided specific visual references to locales. There are no gondolas, no campanile, no harbor docks.
Instead, with a rear stage with upper and lower levels and elemental set-prop on the mainstage thrust, he has been able to accomodate both stately ritual and violent action.
He uses some horizontally-slatted flown-screens to aid in suggesting changing scenes and locales. These aren't exactly shoji-screens, but they do complement the initial Japanese effect, with Othello and Desdemona kneelng in richly decorated robes, designed by Deborah M. Dryden.
The screens look similar to those I recently saw at the Brooklyn Academy of Music [BAM], when it imported an English production set apparently during some kind of British Mandate on Cyprus. Or was their intention to imply the British Raj in India?
Andrew Borba's Cassio is slight of of build, somewhat lightweight in manner, and with glasses, hardly the image of a Venetian nobleman who deserves what Iago perceives as his own rightful promotion. John Pribyl is properly foolish, fond, and frustrated as Roderigo, but his flowing hair—it looked almost white to me—makes him initially seem an aged grandee, rather than a dampish, dumpish young spark.
Taccone and Heald make Iago's outburst of anger at not being promoted by Othello—and his dark suspicions of the rumors that the Moor has defiled his own wife—forceful and believable motives for revenge. These exclamations of outrage do suggest reasons for the devious depths of his diabolic intrigues—in which he succeeds in destroying almost all of the principals, leaving Cassio maimed but able to carry on.
It used to be the fashion of some commentators to insist that Iago's vicious vengeance on Othello was actually unmotivated. That the failure of promotion and the gossip about his wife were only excuses for unmitigaged villainy.
That was supposed to make Iago seem even more monstrous, especially in his device to have the Moor murder the innocent, loving, trusting Desdemona—who had done Iago no wrong whatsoever.
The current Ashland production certainly gives Iago ample cue for his terrible passion and vengeance. It is worth a trip to Oregon—even across country—to see this staging.
If you can also get tickets for "Seven Guitars" and "Three Musketeers," it will be even more worthwhile to make the pilgrimage to Oregon.
"The Three Musketeers"
You've already seen the movie—probably in several versions by now—so why would you want to go all the way to Ashland to see Alexandre Dumas' "The Three Musekteers" live on stage?Because it's a really grand, romantic, adventurous, exciting, action-packed, colorful theatrical spectacle. And because you've never seen this version of Dumas' novel before either.
As adapted by the OSF's own Linda Alper, Douglas Langworthy, and Penny Metropulos—who also staged it—this ingenious script recreates the effect of cinema's ability to cram much more action, event, pageantry, and narrative into modern spectators' attention-spans than almost any play.
This effect is greatly assisted by the physical structure of the Elizabethan stage, which permits scenes to overlap in rapid progression. It also encourages wide-ranging and energetic action with its vomitoria, broad stage, multiple levels, and various entrance & exit portals. As well as encouraging noble posturing, secretive encounters, rambunctious swaggering, and thrilling sword-fights.
This show has it all—including a costume-parade of some of the most splendid 17th century French costumes you are ever likely to behold on an American stage. The multi-talented Deborah M. Dryden is the design-genius who has devised the many, many costumes.
Her estimable colleague, longtime OSF scenic-designer William Bloodgood, has provided steep staircases, pillared statuary of Musketeers, and set-props suggesting noble chambers of the French Court, as well as raffish inns and shabby rooms.
These devices difference the open-stage of the Elizabethan Theatre so that it seems made for the Musketeers and High Melodrama, rather than for the dramas of the Bard. That is no small feat.
What is even more impressive is the fact that it's the most effective and memorable of the three outdoor productions this season. Who would have thought that Dumas could eclipse Shakespeare?
Obviously Penny Metropulos is a director to watch. Her choice of actors from the talented OSF ensemble is itself telling. There is hardly a false note in the playing of the admittedly stereotypical melodramatic characters.
From Cardinal Richelieu [the veteran James Edmondson] to Milady de Winter's maid, Kitty [Catherine Lynn Davis], they all play their appointed roles as if their characters' lives depended on it. Which, in this melodrama, they often do.
Even the elegantly, indolently foppish King Louis XIII [the marvelous Dan Donohue] shrewdly masks his understanding of the various situations and his very real power of delegating to others the intrigues with which he will not dirty his royal hands.
Two youths next to me were virtually falling out of their seats with laughter at the King's effete manners and diction. Not to overlook his elaborate wig and magnificent breeches and doublet.
John Sipes clearly deserves to share some of the huzzahs with Ms. Metropoulos. As her directing associate and fight-choreographer, he has staged some of the most lively and convincing sword-fights I've seen recently. Excepting of course the OSF's current "Othello," which he has also choreographed with a severe brilliance.
It may seem nothing more than a space-filler—we have ample space in the ether!—or a shopping-list, but I must note at least some more of the outstanding players in this excellent production. As is customary in large-scale stagings, there is some doubling and tripling in roles.
Young John Hansen, as the proud young Gascon rustic, D'Artagnan, is an admirable mixture of open-faced innocence, raw courage, self-assurance, and flaring temper. His All for One/One for All companions are strongly—and often amusingly—played by Richard Howard, David Kelly, and U. Jonathan Toppo.
Falstaffian Ken Albers proves himself a more valiant knight in this drama—as De Tréville, Captain of the King's Musketeers.
It's also worth noting in this staging that Cardinal Richelieu knows very well the worth of this elite corps. And, even though he tries to prevent them from frustrating his own intrigues against the Honor of the Queen—and the Power of the King—he recognizes the value to France of such a valiant newcomer as D'Artagnan.
Others of note in the production include Jodi Summers as the Queen's Dressmaker, Vilma Silva as Queen Anne, and Linda Alper as the beautiful but murderous Countess de Winter.
Jonathan Adams, as the licentious George Villiers, Duke of Buckingham, shines as something of a hero in this play, saving the Queen's honor by replacing the stolen diamonds, if not by supporting the French Huguenots.
Too bad that Milady intrigues to have him stabbed by a lust-hating Puritan. This prevents him from really enjoying his new London mansion, Buck House, which we know today as Buckingham Palace.
In Dumas' fiction, the Huguenots are rebels against the Crown and must be at all costs crushed. In historical fact, they were endangered Protestants in a Catholic country. The truth about the brutal, bloody suppression, expulsion, or extermination of these French Protestants is not an issue in this melodrama.
We are supposed to root for King, Country, and Church. If you want more background on the Huguenots, look for information on the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes.
In any case, showing Cardinal Richelieu as a powerful Prince of the Church—who will stop at nothing to maintain and increase his power as the real ruler of France—shows that Dumas was not exactly a member of the Society for the Propagation of the Faith.
Having Richelieu at the close give D'Artagnan a fill-in-the-blanks commission as a Lieutenant of the King's Musketeers does in fact show him as a realist and also a champion of France against its enemies.
"Rosmersholm"
There's a reason Ibsen's "Rosmersholm" is not often produced. And it's not because it may seem excessively melodramatic. Though there is that problem, too.Having the women of Rosmersholm stare out the window and gasp at the sight of the distant mill-race and the footbridge Pastor Rosmer so carefully avoids on his daily walks prepares the alert and constant theatre-goer for the worst.
Especially for ghostly apparitions.
Not the mill-race! Not the White Horse of Rosmersholm! That's what I was thinking the first time I read this play. I read it because no one was staging it, despite a glut of Noras and Heddas and Mrs. Alvings.
In my family, among the Anglo-Irish Cliffords, there is an ancestral fear of the arrival of a strange black dog. He only appears on the day that a Clifford is fated to die.
On the morning of that fatal day when Elizabeth, Empress of Austria, was stabbed in the heart by an assassin on the shores of Lake Geneva, a raven flew in her window and perched on her dressing-table mirror. In her family—the Bavarian Wittelsbachs—black birds are harbingers of death.
So also at Rosmersholm, the appearance of a White Horse down by the mill-race is a sure sign that someone is going to die.
Rosmer's deranged wife Beata—already departed when the drama begins, but still all too much with the survivors at Rosmersholm—jumped from the footbridge into the mill-race. But not before the mysterious White Horse was seen.
At the close, when Pastor John Rosmer [Anthony Heald] joins his wife's former companion and housekeeper, Rebecca West [Robin Goodrin Nordli], to expiate their guilt and confirm their trust in each other—and their just revealed and soon to be extinguished love—she covers her head with a long white crocheted muffler.
As it doesn't complement her costume—designed by Galina Solovyeva—she isn't making a Norwegian-Victorian Fashion-Statement.
No, she is providing Mrs. Helseth [Eileen DeSandre], the Rosmers' maid-of-all-work, with the opportunity to glimpse yet again the White Horse at the mill-race. And to watch the fatal duo jump to their watery deaths.
As in Classic Greek Tragedy, Ibsen has carefully kept the ultimate scene of horror offstage, leaving it to the Maid/Messenger to share her eye-witness report with the not-exactly-unprepared audience.
Mrs. Danvers—excuse me! Mrs. Helseth—has a very bad habit, which is often encountered in Ibsen's plays, where the feather-duster-wielding maid helps fill in the background of the story. She is much given to dark mutterings about the past, present, and future at Rosmersholm.
Her devotion to the dear departed Beata—and her forebodings about Rebecca West—do seem precedent to Mrs. Danvers, the forbidding housekeeper in Daphne DuMaurier's novel, "Rebecca." Did DuMaurier in fact get some of her ideas from Ibsen's drama—including the name of her heroine?
[H. G. Welles' great good friend, the writer Rebecca West, was herself a free-thinker much like her namesake. Indeed, first reading "Grey Lamb and Black Falcon," a modern classic by Rebecca West, I was astonished subsequently to discover she had a fictional namesake in "Rosmersholm."]
Not only does the audience make the horrifying discovery, late in the drama, that Rebecca West may have figuratively pushed poor Beata off that footbridge, but also that she was born—shame of shame!—a bastard! Well, at least Illegitimate.
[Only a few hours later, after this powerful matinee performance, Ashland audiences would behold the the sorry spectacle of another bastard, Don John, betraying the trust of his brother the Prince of Aragon and effectively causing the apparent death of a blameless virgin. How's that for relevance and resonance in OSF programing?]
In Ibsen's time—and even much later—there was a great public prejudice against those born out of wedlock. So this appalling disclosure regarding Rebecca's parentage—coming after the charge that she and Paster Rosmer may have been Living in Sin—dooms any possibility of her remaining at Rosmersholm or ever finding happiness with Rosmer—himself a heap of Silly Putty when backbone and courage are required.
Frankly, experiencing this play in a number of readings and certainly more than a few performances, I have never before been gripped by its confrontations of Conventional Morality and Authoritarian Conservatism with the New Ideas of Enlightenment, Free Thought, and Democracy.
Nor have I been moved to empathy with any of the characters.
But in this production, with the new translation and sensitive direction of Jerry Turner—former longtime artistic directer of the OSF—I experienced the dramatic and social power of the play for the first time.
The Standard-Bearer of the Status Quo, Rector Kroll, has always seemed to me just another of those nasty, black-mailing villains of 19th century melodrama, which Ibsen was so good at disguising as Pillars of Society.
But, as strongly played by Richard Farrell, in this production Kroll took on an entirely understandable endangered humanity, as his authority and character in the community has come under fierce attack by the rabble-rousing reformer, Peter Mortensgaard [Bill Geisslinger].
Back in New York City, people have been asking why we've not seen Anthony Heald recently in productions at the Manhattan Theatre Club or Playwrights Horizons. The mystery is solved!
He's now a member of the OSF ensemble. And his portrayal of the well-intentioned but sadly bewildered and befuddled Pastor Rosmer is impressive.
His projection of innocece and conviction are undercut only by the falseness of his wig. How could you trust a man—and especially an apostate pastor—who would wear such a dreadful hairpiece? Even in Norway—when many people still didn't have flush-toilets—an honest man would rather have gone about bald than wear such a hairy horror.
Sandy McCallum's curiously crusty portrayal of the idealist Ulrik Brendel reminded me of a Martin Short impersonation—a parody of a teacher and thinker gone to seed. Only when I saw him a few hours later, playing Constable Dogberry, in "Much Ado," did I realize who he was really playing in "Rosmersholm.
Designer Richard L. Hay has created a classic Norwegian Period Parlor which can be easily differenced into an upstairs study for the pastor. It is so basic that it could serve for almost all of the most often produced Ibsen dramas, except "Peer Gynt."
The Good Person of Szechuan"
Bertolt Brecht's Anti-Morality Play, "The Good Person of Szechuan," is an hilarious, parodic antidote to all those goody-goody parables about Virtue Is Its Own Reward.What it actually demonstrates is that even unconditional love and open-handed charity have to be tempered with some managerial toughness and materialist reality. Of course, as a philosophical—if not a doctrinaire—Marxist, Brecht obviously regretted that most human beings are not yet ready for Utopia. And probably never will be.
Shen Te [BW Gonzalez] is a sweet-natured—and simple-minded—prostitute. She is the only person who will give Three Immortals lodging for a night. The wealthy, wise, and powerful don't take in strangers.
The Gods—like Diogenes of old, searching vainly for an honest man—are desperately seeking a Mensch, a Good Person. And there is a cash reward to be won—without subscribing to The Reader's Digest!
As with modern lottery-winners, Shen Te is immediately overwhelmed by shrewdly calculating opportunists and by the militantly undeserving poor. She seems unable to reject any pleas or claims.
Finally, she has to disguise herself as an adamantine cousin, Mr. Shui Ta. He isn't going to let anyone get away with anything if he can. Not Shen Te's tobacco-shop, not her money, nor her heart.
Brecht's Brand of Communism—or his interpretation of Marxist-Leninist dogmas—was never popular with the Politburo. Nor were his works much loved by his fellow East Germans in the ghastly German Democratic Republic. Which was neither Democratic nor Republican.
Even at his own DDR theatre—the Berliner Ensemble' Theater am Schiffbauerdamm—workers had to be prodded by cadres to keep them awake during performances. I once witnessed this from Intendant amd Brecht-widow Helene Weigel's own box. And from less exalted seats on other occasions.
Brecht designed his plays to appeal to working-class audiences, with straightforward devices to break through the fourth-wall-barrier of conventional dramas: direct-address, songs, music, soliloquy, pantomime, even supertitles.
The ultimate irony—both behind the Iron Curtain and in the West—was that his plays were far more often admired by the Intellectual Elite than by the Workers. At the Berliner Ensemble, at least when I attended, I saw more professors and students from American and British universities than I did certifiable Socialist Workers.
And when they were in attendance, it was often clear from Body Language and intermission grumbling that they'd have preferred a beer, a bratwurst, and a seat at the lively Revue at the nearby Friedrichstadtpalast.
Fortunately, director Penny Metropulos isn't trying to bring back Stalinism—or Socialize the Rogue River Valley. Instead, she has provided a lively burlesque of human fatuousness, in an almost bare-stage compromise between Chinoiserie and Alienation Effects.
She is ably assisted by designers Riccardo Hernandez [scenic devices], Smaranda Branescu [costumes], and Ann G. Wrightson [lighting]. All three provide stylish visual Alienation Effects.
The outrageous outfits of the three Gods are hilarious. They are laff-riots in themselves, especially that of the Divinity with a lampshade for a hat. He looks like an oversize Chinese Vase, wired as a floor-lamp.
Brechtians may be irritated by such apparent irreverence for the Master's Message, but Branescu's Gods are a refreshing change from some of the desperate costume-strategies employed under Erich Honecker and Company.
Oft-produced plays had to be redesigned—if not always rethought—under the watchful eye of Socialist Censorship. Audiences tired of seeing the same old productions all the time. So directors and designers had to find new costume-bottles for old Brechtian Lehrstück wines.
One memorable but totally depressing production introduced the Three Immortals as pudgy Communist functionaries, complete with uniformly drab, lumpy gray suits, slouch hats, and ratty cardboard suitcases.
They looked like Politburo members on a Black Sea holiday in Bulgaria. Which may well have been the point, as the audience seemed to sense an only slightly disguised critique of the DDR regime in the production.
But it was as sadly gray as daily life in East Germany.
Ashland's new staging is colorful, farcical, lively, and devoid of political power. It will not change the world nor prevent the election of George Bush.
"Seven Guitars"
Could a regional theatre production be better than a play's Broadway incarnation?Defintely yes, in the case of the OSF's staging of August Wilson's "Seven Guitars." The Broadway cast was very good indeed, but Ashland's seems even better, more evenly matched in talents and more "at home" with each other as characters.
One of the problems with the play as produced on Broadway was that the actors were outstanding, but so much so, in the view of some critics, that they eclipsed the play.
Some reviewers, full of admiration for individual performances, mistook them—or their characters—for the substance of the drama itself. They thought that this was another plotless "Lower Depths," about characters loosely connected, without any perceptible purpose.
But "Lower Depths" is not entirely plotless, and "Seven Guitars" has a very definite plot-line. Floyd "Schoolboy" Barton [Ken LaRon] has to find the money to get his guitar out of hock so he can return to Chicago and cut another hit record.
He's been in jail for vagrancy. And he abandoned his woman for another when he first went off to Chicago. And to musical acclaim—which has not exactly materialized.
He also has to redeem the pawned drums of Red Carter [G. Valmont Thomas], convince Canewell [Kevin Kenerly] to rejoin him on harmonica in their combo, and beg Vera [Deidrie Henry] to give him renewed love and join him as moral support in the Windy City.
Each of them has his or her own misgivings about and problems with this project.
Along the way, there are some hilarious and horrifying complications. These include the whims and dreams of Hedley [Derrick Lee Weeden], Ruby [Susan Champion], and Louise [Andrea Frye].
Audiences neither see nor hear seven actual guitars. There are seven-resonances in the text, but the seven characters may also be seen as metaphoric guitars on which various sad and joyous melodies are played.
In New York, I must admit, I was myself paying more attention to the actual performances—focusing on these wonderfully imagined and realized characters—than I was on what used to be called The Major Dramatic Question.
Which can be either: "How will Floyd get it all together and cut another hit record in Chicago?" Or: "Will Floyd get it all together—given the considerable obstacles?"
Director Kenny Leon's clear focus on the through-line of the play never lets the audience forget that there is a definite goal in mind, if not yet in sight. The dramatic tension in the production is generated from the ardent pursuit—and potential frustrations—of Floyd's dream.
Leon has, however, not lost sight of the poetry in this play. Wilson has conceived some wonderfully moving and personal observations about life and survival for each of his characters.
Wilson is, after all, essentially a poet writing for the theatre. Some of his characters' animated meditations come close to Bardic soliloquy. Then there are chance remarks, flip comments, and short shots, which sound like verbal riffs.
Because the goal is about making music, it is also made along the way, with the aid of this cast and composer Dwight Andrews. It is a notable expression of the joy Wilson's people manage to generate in their often disappointing lives. It gives them hope, and it is an expression of hope.
Michael Ganio has designed a rickety Pittsburgh tenement, rather like the Broadway setting. And Susan Tsu's handsome costumes are flashy or conservative as required.
John Sipes again has helped with the movement. Moving in this set is not an easy task, given limited playing-space and awkward entrances—such as a sloping path and a rickety external stairway.
At the close of the drama, as at the opening, the friends and neighbors are in mourning, discussing a funeral. Vera again is sure she saw angels around the coffin, taking the soul off to Heaven.
But what happened to the police investigation of the murder that just happened in this cramped and dusty backyard? The killer is on stage in mourning at the end.
And the dead man's beloved doesn't seem to know what he has done. What gives?
Did I miss some rapid explanation of how this is possible? The killer is Certifiable, but is that an excuse?
Some spectators around me were also confused by this.
PS: Even if Floyd couldn't make it to Chicago in 1948, the Oregon Shakespeare Festival has made it possible for Ashland audiences to visit the Windy City during the Jazz Age, with a revival of Maureen Watkins' play of the same name—not to be confused with the musical of the same name, based on the play.
The photos of the "Chicago" production look great, so I'm sorry I didn't have time to see this show. But eight plays in four days is in itself quite a workout—for critics as well as actors.
"El Paso Blue"
Playright Octavio Solis dynamically dissects a devastating family trauma in "El Paso Blue." But the drama has much wider implications in increasingly multi-cultural, multi-ethnic American society.White suprematists are aroused as they have never been before. Not only are their skilled and unskilled labors decreasing in demand, replaced by low-pay workers in other lands.
But they are also increasingly being replaced at home by people whom they perceive as non-white. A particular focus of fear and hatred are those who were already in the American Southwest long before the arrival of the Gringo Yanquis.
Throughout history, one way to fight The Other—short of Serb-style Ethnic Cleansing—has been to degrade, despise, and demonise them.
"El Paso Blues" doesn't present bloodly clashes between displaced white workers and illegal Mexican immigrants. Its clashes are related to racist reactions, but on a much more personal level.
In fact, the two whites involved in the drama are already marginalized from the American Mainstream. Both are pathetic—but occasionally amusing and spirited—losers.
Sylvie—played with an amazing range of emotions by the talented Linda Halaska—is a former Miss Texas Third Place Runner-Up. She long ago lost her father—and has been looking for another, though she doesn't know it.
She rejects her mother and her Beauty Queen Dreams. Hanging around El Paso bars, making herself widely available, she meets and falls in love with Alejandro [Thom Rivera], a conflicted, confused Mexican-American.
Theirs is an unexamined but passionate relationship. Unfortunately, it is abruptly interrupted when Al has to go to prison for a crime he didn't commit.
He is covering for a flaky white American buddy, Duane [Carey Gibbar], who once took a bullet in the head that was intended for him. This sad but often comic member of the Walking Wounded has a silver plate in his skull—which picks up TV, short-wave, and cellular transmissions.
Before going off to the lock-up, Al begs his estranged father, Jefe [Armando Duran], to look after an unwilling Sylvie for him. After initial hostilities—Sylvie reminds Jefe all too much of his late wife, who tried desperately to be both a professional singer and accepted across the border as a blonde beauty—they crash into a deep and desperate love-affair.
Solis is much too original and ingenious a writer to tell this tale as developmental narrative. Instead, he ambiguously introduces the characters, so spectators need time to connect the dots.
Having done this, however, they are still very much on the surface of the deep waters flowing beneath: the reasons for the hatred between father and son, the failed aspirations to make it in America and to be accepted.
The structure of the drama is a classic Quest with a Tex-Mex flavor.
Released from prison, Al is enraged when he discovers that his wife and his father have betrayed him in their passionate incest. And that they have run away, fearing his vengeance
Forcing Duane to honor his debt of friendship, he sets out on a mini-epic Search, intending to kill them both. On their way, they pick up a Guide, China [Vilma Silva], who seems a Mexican slum-kid with a mysterious sense of where they should go to find the incestuous couple. China has has a special agenda—and some surprises in store.
In the process of visiting various Stations of the Cross in Al's life, the deeper stories of Jefe, the sad wife he tried to "un-Americanize," Al, Sylvie, and even Duane, all emerge.
Octavio Solis' fractured method of telling his tale gives it even more power and mystery. The audience can finally connect all the dots.
If the heart of Greek classic drama is gaining Wisdom through Suffering, all these characters certainly suffer. And their wisdom is won at very great cost.
Despite all the furious passion and high drama, the integration of Michael "Hawkeye" Herman's Tex-Mex guitar-music, Sylvie's plaintive songs, and the deftly paced direction of Timothy Bond make this production often very exciting as well as moving. And more amusing than depressing.
Richard L. Hay's backyard junkheap of a set—with a pickup truckbed for the Musician—works wonderfully well. All the necessary set-props are dumped along a fence separating the audience from the volatile action. And it all seems to be happening under an immense elevated freeway, with snatches of El Paso visible above the thrusting stage.
I saw this play premiered in Dallas several seasons ago—in a city which doesn't have as obvious a clash of cultures and aspirations as El Paso. It was somewhat coolly received, and even I was not much impressed by it.
It was presented in a spaced-out production, arena-style, but in a theatre much larger than Ashland's intimate black-box Black Swan Theatre. The production didn't connect with the audience.
I had difficulty decoding its fractured structure, and I had no empathy with any of the characters. After the Ashland experience, I realize this drama needs to be presented in a confined space to concentrate its high-octane explosives.
It also needs remarkable actors of the varied talents on view at the Black Swan. I found myself empathizing with all of them, even goofy old Duane.
Thanks to Octavio Solis and "El Paso Blue," I've also found myself thinking about the larger American social implications of wanting to be accepted, to achieve material success.
To be part of the American Dream. Before it becomes an American Nightmare.
Shakespeare South of the [Oregon] Border:
In case you cannot go to Oregon, there are a at least five Bardic Festivals in and near the San Francisco-Bay Area. In smart suburban Orinda, there's the California Shakespeare Festival, with an acceptable outdoor theatre conformation but unruly winds.Years ago, there was a Marin Shakespeare Festival on the grounds of the Dominican Convent. I wrote about it for Smithsonian —along with some twenty-five other fests for the Bard. It moved to San Francisco and expired. Now it seems to have been Reborn, and it's in the Forest Meadows Amphitheatre, at the Dominican College, San Rafael.
Also in Marin County—one of America's richest-income counties!—is Shakespeare at Stinson. Even more years ago—like 1938-39—I used to go to Stinson Beach with family friends to fish for bass. I never caught any. I was too small to hold the heavy pole. I haven't checked out the fest, but the fish there were always prime.
Free Shakespeare in the Park is a roving affair. It will play in Oakland, San Francisco, and Cupertino—which is near the Winchester Mystery House! Check them both out.
Then there's Shakespeare Santa Cruz, on the campus of the University of California at Santa Cruz—one of the more laid-back & mellow of the UC campuses. At Ashland, smoke-sensitive audiences were warned that "herbal cigarettes" would be smoked by some play-casts. Santa Cruz is definitely herbal. [Loney]
Copyright © Glenn Loney 1999. No re-publication or broadcast use without proper credit of authorship. Suggested credit line: "Glenn Loney, New York Theatre Wire." Reproduction rights please contact: jslaff@nytheatre-wire.com.
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