Ashland troupe focuses on comedy and romance in outdoor season

ASHLAND, Ore. — This summer, in the artsy Southern Oregon hamlet of Ashland, the days are scorchers, the evenings balmy and the classical theater fare lighter than usual.

In most years, at least one of the three classics the Oregon Shakespeare Festival (OSF) annually presents on its outdoor Elizabethan Stage is a tragedy by the Bard of Avon. This summer the weightiest thing you'll find there is Edmond Rostand's "Cyrano de Bergerac" — essentially a swashbuckling comedy-romance with pangs of heartbreak.

The emphasis on less substantial fare (Shakespeare's "The Merry Wives of Windsor" and "Two Gentlemen of Verona" are also on the outdoor bill), might just be a blip on the radar screen of this 71-year-old fest.

But real change is definitely in the air at the West Coast's largest regional theater. The three-stage Ashland company, which attracts more than 100,000 patrons a year (including many from Washington state), is hiring a new artistic director — only the fifth in its history. That leader will be named this fall, work alongside retiring artistic head Libby Appel during the 2007 season, and then who knows what changes may be in store for OSF?

For those planning a jaunt to Ashland sooner, however, there's a more immediate question: What's on the boards at OSF now? The 2006 season (which runs through Oct. 29) continues with six indoor shows, performed in rolling repertory at the New Theatre and the Angus Bowmer Theatre (see sidebar for an annotated listing), and the following open-air attractions in the Elizabethan amphitheater:

"Cyrano de Bergerac"

As Shakespeare's Juliet might tell you, a nose is a nose is a nose — except for the incomparable schnozz on this play's hero, a figure based on a Renaissance Frenchman with a truly magnificent proboscis.

The genuine Cyrano was a 17th century author, social critic and soldier, with a world-class beak. In his hokey but irresistible 1897 fantasia, playwright Rostand also made him an unrequited lover who vicariously woos his comely cousin Roxane on behalf of Christian, a dashing but inarticulate Gascony cadet she fancies.

As anticipated, returning OSF alum Marco Barricelli makes a strapping, robustly charismatic Cyrano. Barricelli has a thrilling basso voice, which rumbles seductively over such exhortations as: "She can knit grace from a twine of air!" and "A great nose is the index of a great soul." He's also a whiz at upbraiding his enemies verbally, projecting ardent nobility and handling a sword with flair.

Barricelli drives director Laird Williamson's sentimental and beautifully composed rendering of the play, as adapted from flowery French into sleeker English by the late Anthony Burgess.

There is a rewarding interplay of action and tableau on display, with striking stage pictures of battle (recalling the paintings of Goya), and such memorable sights as a cascade of poems drifting from on high to paper the stage and a chorus of nuns ascending toward the heavens at vespers.

The luxuriant period costumes are by OSF regular Deborah M. Dryden, the fine musical accents by resident composer Todd Barton.

A caveat, though — one too typical of current OSF fare. Unlike the darker, stripped-down version of "Cyrano" staged recently by Seattle Shakespeare Company, this is an overly reverent treatment of a work which, for all its juicy theatricality, is also liberally sauced with nobility-of-the-soul claptrap.

Reveling in the hero's "ecstasy of excess" (including one of the longest, schmaltziest death scenes in theater history) makes for a sluggish 3-½-hour running time — a long haul, even with a Cyrano of great panache.

"The Merry Wives of Windsor"

This farcical progenitor of such double-couple sitcoms as "I Love Lucy" does not rank high on the critical honor roll of Shakespeare comedies. Staged with care and cunning, however, it has been much more amusing in past OSF versions than in this screechy, tricked-up take from director Andrew Tsao.

The rotund rogue Sir John Falstaff — so popular a scene-stealer in "King Henry IV" (Parts I and II), that Shakespeare brought him back for an encore in this romp — is played in Ashland with bulky padding (and relative comic restraint) by ex-Seattleite G. Valmont Thomas.

But the prim Elizabethan London suburban setting for Falstaff's lechery and comeuppance has been turned into a loud, garish Victorian carnival, where buffoons in gaudy garb cavort and mug. The worst offender: Judith-Marie Bergan, whose fright-wigged tavern-fly, Mistress Quickly, comes on like a shrieking refugee from Cirque du Soleil.

The quality of shtick is crucial to "Merry Wives," which is basically an extended revenge joke plotted by two desperate Windsor housewives, Alice Ford (Tyler Layton) and Margaret Page (Shona Tucker), to give local lech Falstaff his comeuppance.

But the comic capers here have all the subtle efficacy of a jug of Falstaff's favorite rot-gut sack (liquor) without the intoxication or the giggles. Rubber seafood is brandished. A jokey sound-score quotes Tchaikovsky, Motown and the Beatles.

And into this tedious grab-bag goes a ponderous number that's like an outtake from TV's "So You Think You Can Dance," and a finale which has everyone gettin' huggy to a chorus of "Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da." As the lyrics of the latter instruct, life does goes on — after what feels like a wasted lifetime watching this ill-conceived mish-mash.

"Two Gentlemen of Verona"

Who can blame director Bill Rauch for also monkeying around with this Shakespeare comedy, an early work that's the equivalent of an Elizabethan buddy flick?

Happily, Rauch's bold re-setting of this scan of youthful male friendship, subverted by a rivalry for the same girl, is novel, at times ingenious and executed with comedic grace.

It seems Valentine (Juan Rivera LeBron) and Proteus (Gregory Linington) are Amish kids, embarking on a "rumspringa," a journey of discovery outside their rural religious community. Visiting the "Match Point"-style estate of a wealthy noble (William Langan), their commitment to each other and to the values they were raised on are put to the test.

Rauch prefaces the show with Shakespeare's Sonnet 26 ("Duty so great, which wit so poor as mine ... ") and takes other liberties. But they are well-taken in this often amusing, sometimes touching study of boys behaving badly, and well.

Misha Berson: mberson@seattletimes.com