Oh yeah, the plays!

Our trip to Ashland was in honor of our 21st anniversary. Our one and only previous experience at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival was a fifth grade field trip with our youngest child. We were chaperons. It was not romantic.

This trip was different. The plays were a reason for our particular destination, but the real purpose of the trip had more to do with our relationship than any drama on the stage. I mention this because we did not plan the trip with meticulous attention to which plays we would see, who would take the lead roles, or even what the subject matter might happen to be. It was mostly a matter of two from column A and two from column B. If you know what I mean.

That said, we did indeed enjoy the plays. The first was A View from the Bridge, by Arthur Miller. The tension built steadily from when the action began in the first scene until just before the intermission. As it reached its crescendo--in scene that involved lifting an ordinary chair with one hand--I gasped out loud. I would have been embarrassed, but I was far from the only member of the audience who had become so caught up in the play.

That evening we saw The Comedy of Errors, by William Shakespeare in the open air Elizabethan Theater. Set in the Wild West, Will's hilarious story fairly bubbled along with several songs that borrowed language from the Bard so skillfully they did not feel like additions. I did not care for the characterization employed by one of the female leads, but she didn't ruin it for me. I was intrigued by role played by the male lead from A View from the Bridge. The same actor who had played the tortured, tragic father now appeared as a comedic snake oil salesman. I was virtually certain it was the same man, but I still had to check my program to be sure because his performance had nothing in common with the earlier role.

The next day we saw Breakfast, Lunch, and Dinner, by Luis Alfaro. I had high expectations because I thought it was about food. I'm way into food. It wasn't about food. We weren't really sure what it was about. Still, bumkin that I am, I love to see a live show and thoroughly enjoyed the novel staging, costumes, and acting. Once again it was fun to compare the performance of an actor from the previous evening who had a very different role in this contemporary play.

Our last play was The Clay Cart, a 2ooo year-old play from India by Sudraka. The romantic comedy has aged well. The female actor I had not liked much from Comedy of Errors had the female lead again. Fortunately, her odd body language and incessant head-whipping did not recur. She was lovely as the courtesan who falls in love with an impoverished Brahmin with a heart of gold, although I could not buy her rendition of classical India dance. It looked a little to Hip Hop to me.

I'm sure the critics have found flaws in all these efforts. But I don't go to the theater to look for mistakes. I go to be transported. OSF does a great job of finding people willing to work very hard at making theatrical magic happen and I am a willing participant.