Ashland Season Safe, Sound

ASHLAND, Ore. - How to change . . . yet not to change?

That was the question for the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, as the West Coast's largest resident theater company launched its 1993 season last weekend.

The opening four-show menu included a pair of artistic firsts for OSF. A production of "Joe Turner's Come and Gone," by Seattle-based writer August Wilson, marks the first time, remarkably, the company has mounted in Ashland a play by an African American. (Wilson's "Fences" was seen in OSF's 1991 Portland season.)

Another first: a condensed, story-theater "Cymbeline" that is the only Shakespeare ever presented in the 138-seat Black Swan, the intimate Ashland venue usually reserved for modern fare.

With these moves, and a few other nuances, new artistic director Henry Woronicz began his quiet campaign to jar OSF loose from an aesthetic conservatism and cultural blandness that has kept the theater's box office busy but its artistic vision pinched.

Woronicz succeeded longtime artistic director Jerry Turner, who retired last summer after more than two decades with the festival. Presiding over his first opening weekend at the helm, OSF's congenial new chief told critics he hopes to steer the company away from literal dramatic realism and provoke the audience to "use their imaginations" more. Woronicz also spoke of "widening the circle of artists" in Ashland to achieve greater diversity onstage.

But if the indoor shows at the top of this season are any indication, no one can reasonably accuse Woronicz of wide-eyed radicalism. He seems to be charting a careful, mildly challenging middle course that will introduce a few more contemporary trappings to OSF, but won't get its more tradition-bound patrons up in arms - or satisfy tougher critics.

`JOE TURNER' AFFECTING

The most invigorating work on display is one of those "firsts" - "Joe Turner's Come and Gone," keenly staged by New York director Clinton Turner Davis and running in repertory at the Angus Bowmer Theatre through July 18 and from Sept. 16 through Oct. 30.

Wilson's brooding yet luminous drama takes place in a Pittsburgh boarding house in 1911, where black newcomers from the South seek haven as they search for lost loved ones and try to mend broken lives. Though it is more than four decades after the Emancipation Proclamation, the dark specter of slavery still looms large.

Of all Wilson's plays, this one makes the most of its sociohistorical backdrop and yarn-spinning personae. The OSF actors generally do a terrific job mining the script's rich deposits of mysticism, humor and feeling. Lanky Aldo Billingslea's cavalier musician, B.W. Gonzalez's lonely young laundress, and J.P. Phillips as the cranky boardinghouse owner and Seattle actress Tamu Gray as his openhearted wife, are among the standouts.

The cast got some added inspiration opening night, with Wilson on hand. The dramatist came to Ashland as a special guest of the festival, and charmed all by giving a friendly, anecdotal talk about his work at a luncheon for journalists, OSF employees and donors. And Wilson seemed pleased with the performance of "Joe Turner": At its stirring conclusion, tears were streaming down his face.

A "Richard III" for the '90s

While "Joe Turner" provided the weekend's most affecting drama, the most discussed show was a rendering of "Richard III," which plays through Oct. 31 at the Bowmer. Director James Edmondson noted that this Shakespeare script has 3,600 lines - making it the Bard's second-longest work. (The first, at 3,900 lines, is "Hamlet.")

Running nearly unedited at close to four hours, this "Richard III" certainly took its time. And despite a sleek, stripped-down design and slightly risque interpretation, it often lay heavily on the stage.

The surprise for Ashland regulars is that Marco Barricelli, a strapping, handsome actor more predictably cast as noble Henry V two years ago, plays the Bard's Tricky Dick. Decked out in black leather, with a benign wire hump, stringy wet-look locks, and a rumbling bass voice, Barricelli is more hunk than hellhound.

Edmundson's staging pointedly eroticizes Richard's evil. Far from being the walking pestilence suggested by the text, this royal schemer is attractive enough to grope and neck his way to the throne. His casual butchery apparently makes him irresistible to women - he gets down and dirty with Lady Anne (Dawn Lisell-Frank) at her slaughtered hubby's funeral, and Queen Elizabeth (Michelle Morain) even gives him a steamy smooch after he offs her sons.

Traditionalists will carp about "Richard III" because the men look like exiles from the movie "Road Warrior." (The women wear designer Deborah M. Dryden's sexy period gowns, in silver-spangled black.) The stark set by William Bloodgood, also in basic black with some junkyard garnishes, drew a few more grumbles.

But the real problem with "Richard III" is that it grabs your attention only in spasms. The show suffers from an affliction too common in Americanized Shakespeare: The more stimulating directorial ideas go only costume-deep, and the acting too often skims the surface. With the exception of Barricelli and a few others, the actors tend to give their line readings a cultivated sameness and slip into heavy emoting. And apart from the flesh-grabs here and there, not much that occurs surprises or shocks. It's competent, straight-down-the-middle Ashland Shakespeare, sexed up a little for the '90s.

`Cymbeline' a fairy tale

The pocket adaptation of "Cymbeline," though an hour shorter, also is more lugubrious than intended. But this production (running through May 2 at the Black Swan) flares to life for longer periods, thanks to the vivacious leads: Cindy Basco as faithful Imogen and Don Burroughs, as both Imogen's husband, Posthumus, and her snotty stalker, Cloten.

Woronicz's storybook concept serves this problematic Shakespeare text quite well. He and his eight-member cast have adapted a meandering plot stocked with Brothers Grimm archetypes (wicked stepmother, parted lovers, foundling raised by cave dweller) and compressed it into a homespun fairy tale.

The textured costumes by Carole Wheeldon and Bloodgood's rough-hewn set handsomely extend the effect.

When the doe-eyed Basco and appealing Burroughs hold forth, the magic ignites. But others in the ensemble bring on yawns. (Terri McMahon is so monochromatic it takes a while to realize she's got two roles: a nasty queen and a kindly old nobleman.) And at times all that nubby cotton, earnest drumming and foot stomping get awfully self-conscious.

`Flea' a familiar farce

Georges Feydeau's "A Flea In Her Ear," the fourth show premiering (and playing through Oct. 31 at the Bowmer), is the OSF Ashland its loyalists know and love. The quintessential slamming-doors French farce, in which haute bourgeois husbands and wives get jealous of affairs their spouses aren't really having, is the kind of creamy parfait OSF can seemingly whip up in its sleep.

Seattle favorite Peter Silbert scampers and mugs in two comic guises (as the dignified Victor and his mongrel bellboy double, Poche) to win big laughs. He's supported by such polished farceurs as Dan Kremer, Ray Porter, Fredi Olster and Rick Hamilton.

Winging along on a witty translation by John ("Rumpole of the Bailey") Mortimer, director Kenneth Albers' production also looks like a million francs. Ashland set design dean Richard L. Hay provides a pastel Paris parlor with just the right amount of ostentation, and a hideaway hotel that's a fin-de-siecle-meets-Arabian-Nights marvel of decadence. The fanciful period costumes by Charles Berliner match up in gaudiness.

OSF could skate along with gilded trifles like this, and with homogenized Shakespeare, but it's clear Woronicz wants to let in some fresh artistic breezes, too. We'll watch his progress as the Ashland season continues to unfold.

----------------------------------- OSF'S OFFERINGS FOR 1993 -----------------------------------

The 1993 Ashland season of the Oregon Shakespeare Festival extends through Oct. 31. In 1992 more than 350,000 tickets were sold to the theater's performances , and attendance could be even higher this year.

If you're planning a visit to the festival, advance ticket purchase is strongly recommended to get the seats you want on the days you want them, especially during the summer and on weekends. To receive a detailed schedule of all performances, write to the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, Box 158, Ashland, Ore. 97520; or call the OSF ticket office at (503) 482-4331, Tuesdays through Sundays.

The following productions are scheduled at OSF Ashland:

"Lips Together, Teeth Apart" by Terrence McNally (April 16-Sept. 12).

"Light in the Village" by John Clifford (March 28-June 27).

"Mad Forest" by Caryl Churchill (July 7-Oct. 30).

"The Baltimore Waltz" by Paula Vogel (May 9-Oct. 31).

"Antony and Cleopatra" by William Shakespeare (June 8-Oct. 2).

"A Midsummer Night's Dream" by William Shakespeare (June 9-Oct. 3).

"The White Devil" by John Webster (June 10-Oct. 1).

"The Illusion" by Tony Kushner, based on a play by Pierre Corneille (July 28-Oct. 30). It takes the place of "Theresa Bassoon," which is listed in the brochure.