Oregon Shakespeare Festival opens with a timely thrust
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ASHLAND, Ore. — Oregon Shakespeare Festival has kicked off its 2002 season with a streamlined take on the homicidal tragedy "Macbeth" and several other plays that reflect on chaos, anarchy and power grabbing.
How apt, in a time of global political-personal insecurity. And what synchronicity: The playlist for the popular Ashland, Ore., company was set by artistic director Libby Appel long ago — months before the world-destabilizing events of Sept. 11.
The works now at OSF's two indoor auditoriums — the spacious Angus Bowmer Theatre and the just-completed jewel in the festival crown, the New Theatre — range back to ancient Rome ("Julius Caesar"), to the Middle Ages ("Macbeth"), and on to the brink of World War II ("Idiot's Delight") and, more macrocosmically, to 1980s England ("Noises Off").
But in varying degrees, all remind us that ruthless ambition and conspiracy among leaders, and the desperate uncertainty of the masses, are recurring conditions.
The four shows OSF unveiled this month fluctuate in their effectiveness as commentary and as dynamic drama.
Last year, OSF's 11-play season sold 368,776 tickets, largely to visitors from Oregon, Washington and California. And since the New Theatre can have twice the capacity of the venue it replaced, the Black Swan, the figures should jump. (Advance sales are ahead of 2001.)
But the 67-year-old company, one of the largest and most flush in the nation, still struggles to live up artistically to its own hype and box-office success. So far, the 2002 season is hit and miss.
"Macbeth." Inaugurating the splendid New Theatre is a long run of what actors still superstitiously term "The Scottish Play."
Director Appel and her co-adapter Lue Douthit pared Shakespeare's text substantially for this rendition of the steep rise and shuddering fall of the Scottish warrior (Seattle stage alum G. Valmont Thomas) who, helped by his crafty wife (BW Gonzalez) turns serial killer to capture the throne.
But when staging gimmicks upstage vigorous interpretation, a two-hour "Macbeth" sans intermission can seem interminable — as this one ultimately does.
Performed with a "skeleton" cast of six, the show keeps intact the Macbeths' dialogue but trims a lot of other things (such as the "double, double toil and trouble" chant of the three witches.)
But what's awry here is more due to conception and pacing than editing. Staged in the round (one of the New Theatre's three possible configurations), the show's stark set by Richard L. Hay is a disc-shaped platform with a pool of syrupy faux blood in the center. The actors dip into this vat often, splashing their white costumes with scarlet goo, as Macbeth's murderous acts mount.
After a while, though, the splatter effect is so predictable it's silly. Worse is having three rather bland actors (Suzanne Irving, Terri McMahon and Julie Oda) tackle nearly 20 roles among them — and fail to keenly differentiate or capture the essence of witches, macho warriors and palace aides.
Thomas (who years ago enacted Macbeth at Seattle's Bathhouse Theatre), is not at his best here, with a numbed-out portrayal that idles in neutral. And Gonzalez falls into the sticky trap of sexing up Lady M to the point of distraction.
What a relief then is the sturdy figure of Macbeth's kinsman Banquo, essayed with affecting gravitas by Jeffrey King. He is our one clear guide into the vertiginous fable of "Thriftless ambition, that will ravin up / Thine own live's means."
"Julius Caesar." Also gimmicky scenically, on Ralph Funicello's busy set of shifting panels and armament sculpture, Laird Williamson's mounting of the action-packed conspiracy drama runs an hour longer than "Macbeth" yet moves twice as briskly.
That's largely due to the pointed, compelling power of Derrick Lee Weeden's regal Brutus and Dan Donohue's slippery Mark Antony (a combination of wholesomeness and guile), with Vilma Silva also excelling as Portia, the high-minded wife of Brutus.
Fully peopled, the show is especially fine in the first act, as the cabal against Caesar gains force and accomplishes a formal act of mutiny that feels both comprehensible and misguided. The aftermath, with its factions and losses of men good and evil, is less consistently gripping. But Williamson's direction and the military gear designed by Andrew V. Yelusich impart the message that this story transcends the murky politics and allegiances of one long-gone era to echo our own.
"Idiot's Delight." OSF's latest investigation of a "lost" American landmark play is this resurrection of Robert Sherwood's Pulitzer Prize-honored 1936 antiwar piece.
It's a prototypical "trapped-in-an-elevator" setup — but with an intriguing backdrop: an Italian Alps resort where an international cluster of stranded travelers wait anxiously as World War II erupts nearby. Characters include a bogus Russian countess and an American hoofer and his retinue of chorus-line blondes.
An outspoken pacifist at the time, Sherwood penned a script that mixes nimble wisecracks and vaudeville musical numbers with wry philosophical reflections on the brutality and ultimate absurdity of armed conflict.
The plays runs long, with creaky and repetitive patches. But Peter Amster's staging is lively and adorned with Mara Blumenfeld's smart '30s garb and William Bloodgood's snazzy Deco set.
There's also some provocative parallels here with our own war-ready era, and a playful chemistry between Robin Goodrin Nordli and Michael Elich in roles originated by Alfred Lunt and Lynn Fontaine onstage, Clark Gable and Norma Shearer on film.
"Noises Off." Seems like Michael Frayn's intricately slapstick backstage-onstage farce is turning up everywhere — from Ashland to Broadway.
OSF's edition, directed by Kenneth Albers, isn't the most hilarious rendering but it's certainly serviceable — especially if you've never seen this comedy before, and are surprised by its ingenious stumbles, bumbles, wrangles and backstage battles as a second-rate acting troupe devolves into a pack of squabbling, self-serving brats.
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