Oregon Shakespeare Festival 2017: The Merry Wives of Windsor

Left to right: Rex Young, Amy Newman, K.T. Vogt, Vilma Silva, Paul Juhn. Photo courtesy Jenny Graham and the Oregon Shakespeare Festival.

OSF’s 2017 production of The Merry Wives of Windsor is also an ‘80s jukebox musical. This theme may seem strange to traditionalists, but it invites a sense of campy fun into one of Shakespeare’s lightest, silliest comedies. The antics of classical farce combined with bright colors, excellent comedic acting, and cheesy dance music create a remarkably entertaining show.

OSF’s talented ensemble is generally subtle and nuanced, which makes the times they throw caution to the wind and embrace excess all the more fun. (See also their production of The Wiz from last year.) 1980s hits from a variety of genres punctuate key parts of the production: Bardolph (U. Jonathan Toppo) and Pistol’s (Al Espinosa) plot to expose Falstaff is set to Bell Biv DeVoe’s “Poison,” while the fairy dance at the show’s climax starts with “Thriller,” dance included, and ends with Guns N’ Roses.

At the core of Merry Wives is the bumbling rogue Falstaff, who also makes an appearance in the Henry IV duology that runs concurrently with this show. Standing in his shoes is K.T. Vogt, a nine-season OSF mainstay best known for her comedic roles. Vogt’s performance is outstanding, operating Falstaff with fifty percent ego, fifty percent animalistic lust, and zero percent self-awareness. This impeccable character work is only matched by Vogt’s gift for physical comedy, jumping and air-guitaring across the stage when she makes her appearances.

The rest of the cast keeps up with Falstaff’s buffoonery. Anne Page (Jamie Ann Romero), the ostensible protagonist of the play, resolutely attempts to tie the knot with Fenton (William DeMerritt). As befits the setting of the show, Romero channels the female lead in every John Hughes movie with a sense of earnest, mischievous defiance. Rex Young’s Master Ford, an uptight, jealous stick in the mud, serves as a foil to Falstaff,  but has the same over-the-top comedic energy. Jeremy Peter Johnson’s Doctor Caius, though a side character, nearly steals the show with an outrageous French accent and wild swordplay.

Ulises Alcala’s costume designs help synthesize the updated theme with the original setting of the play, Elizabethan England. Characters are clothed in gowns and doublets saturated with the bright pastels common in the ‘80s, and other throwbacks to that era – including Anne’s hair – appear on occasion. Codpieces play a major part in both the costuming and the comedy, with Falstaff sporting an oversized model complete with a zipper compartment.

In order for Shakespeare’s plays to be relevant to the modern day, they need to be viewed through the lens of goofy camp as much as the lens of serious reenactment. OSF’s 2017 production of Merry Wives is a marvelous execution of the former, making you laugh at the play as much as you think about it. 

The Merry Wives of Windsor runs until October 13th.

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Our Comprehensive Coverage of the OSF 2017 Season

• Coverage Overview
• UniSon
• Hannah and the Dread Gazebo
• Julius Caesar
• Henry IV, Part 1
• The Merry Wives of Windsor
• The Odyssey
• Beauty And The Beast

Oregon Shakespeare Festival 2017: Henry IV, Part 1

Left to right: Daniel José Molina, Jeffrey King. Photo courtesy Jenny Graham and the Oregon Shakespeare Festival.

Prince Hal, soon to inherit the throne of England, is busy living a hedonistic life with Falstaff and his band of merry rogues. But as Henry IV, Part 1 sets the stage for Shakespeare’s epic trilogy about the soon-to-be Henry V, the weight of the crown becomes increasingly heavy upon Prince Hal’s head. OSF’s 2017 production, continuing with Part 2 this season and Henry V in 2018, brings this classic tale of royalty into a modern setting.

Bringing Shakespeare into the current day is fairly common, most famously (or infamously) represented by Baz Luhrmann’s film Romeo + Juliet. However, with a modern setting comes a difficult balancing act. If the direction is successful, the themes and meanings within the play become more evident. However, if the adaptation gets too cute, it could spell major problems for the production. Director Lileana Blain-Cruz, however, displays good judgment in her adaptation. Falstaff’s carousing makes more sense to us in a trendy club, and it doesn’t detract from the language or original plot.

Daniel José Molina portrays the part of Prince Hal, which he inhabits with spectacular versatility. His drunken antics are frequently too much, even for his drinking buddy Falstaff (G. Valmont Thomas), but Hal respects his own limits, quietly avoiding actions that would actually hurt his reputation as an heir to the throne. Molina’s Hal becomes princelier when he’s thrust upon the battlefield – not, perhaps, nobler, but matured by the reality of war. Thomas’ Falstaff, conversely, hardly develops at all: He’s the big fun friend who’s useless in a crisis. His antics change from entertaining in the bar to pathetic on the battlefield.

As Shakespeare wrote the play, King Henry IV (Jeffrey King) has a surprisingly small number of on-stage appearances. Yet it’s his interactions with Prince Hal and his ongoing struggle against Hotspur (Alejandra Escalante) and her aunt, rebel leader Worcester (Kimberly Scott), that drive the plot of the play forward. King’s portrayal is troubled and serious, splitting his attention between problems ranging from Hotspur’s military rebellion to Prince Hal’s adolescent one. His actions aren’t driven by emotion, but by a sense of self-preservation for his bloodline and his country. Hotspur and Worcester are as righteous as Henry IV is resigned; Escalante injects a powerful passion into both Hotspur’s battles and love life, and Scott’s Worcester possesses a cold, powerful indignation.

The technical element of Henry IV, Part 1 keeps pace with the constantly changing tone of the play. The scene introducing Falstaff’s gang makes use of garish neon colors and pulsating music, while the climactic Battle of Shrewsbury is executed with a brutal military grittiness not seen on the Ashland stage since 2012’s incredible Troilus and Cressida. Accolades go to the technical team (scenic designer Adam Rigg, costume designer Dede M. Ayite, lighting designer Yi Zhao, and composer/sound designer Palmer Hefferan, among others) for their adept navigation of a difficult text: They know when to go over-the-top and when to let Shakespeare’s writing speak for itself. The ever-present back wall, featuring a torn mural of King Henry, writes volumes on its own.

Henry IV, Part 1 at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival is a more balanced view of the weight of royalty than Macbeth or Richard III, which descend quickly into madness and betrayal; rather, it looks at the weight of character needed to be an effective ruler, and the vast gulf between “prince” and “king.” Despite being the first in a trilogy, OSF’s 2017 production of Henry IV, Part 1 possesses the deep meaning and character development required to stand on its own.

Henry IV, Part 1 runs until October 28th.

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Our Comprehensive Coverage of the OSF 2017 Season

• Coverage Overview
• UniSon
• Hannah and the Dread Gazebo
• Julius Caesar
• Henry IV, Part 1
• The Merry Wives of Windsor
• The Odyssey
• Beauty And The Beast

Oregon Shakespare Festival 2017: Julius Caesar

Left to right: Stephen Michael Spencer, Rodney Gardiner (kneeling), Armando Durán, Danforth Comins. Photo courtesy Jenny Graham and the Oregon Shakespeare Festival.

Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar has a misleading name. Although the Roman leader does play a significant role, and his assassination is what sparks most of its action, we never learn much about him or see him develop. Rather, Julius Caesar is an examination of political ambition, public opinion, and how the worst acts are often paved with good intentions. Shana Cooper’s bare, unsettling production strips away the formal veneer of ancient Rome to expose the action as men committing acts of horrific violence for unclear reasons.

Armando Durán portrays the role of Caesar in this production. His interpretation is very different from that of Vilma Silva, who played the same part in OSF’s 2011 production: While Silva was composed and quiet, Durán has a casual, Reaganesque charisma that makes it easy to see why the Roman public adores him. Vaguely aware of the plot to assassinate him, Durán’s Caesar resigns himself to his fate: He accepts that Caesar the public figure is something that has eclipsed Caesar the man, and that his death is no longer anything over which he has control. The objections of Calpurnia (Amy Kim Waschke), his wife, complicates the topic, however: As her sincere, emotional dialogue work correctly notes, Julius Caesar is still a human being, regardless of where history has seated him.

After Ceasar is assassinated, war ignites between loyalist Mark Antony (Jordan Barbour) and the turncoat senators led by Marcus Brutus (Danforth Comins) and Cassius (Rodney Gardiner). Barbour’s emotional interpretation of Antony, combined with our perspective of the events mainly coming from the senators, leads one to believe that he is strong but straightforward; however, his famous “Friends, Romans, countrymen” speech is so terrifyingly persuasive that it undoes not only the hold the Senators had on the common people, but the audience’s conception of Antony himself.

Cassius has the clearest conscience about killing Caesar, but because the audience is never given a clear vision of Caesar’s actions, we don’t know if  this is a mere power play or done out of some kind of conviction. Rodney Gardiner’s performance leads us to believe Cassius’ motives are more on the selfish side, as his preparations for the killing are tinged with an almost innocent enthusiasm. Comins’ Brutus is a fairly standard handling of the role – a conflicted man who doubts his actions from the start of the play – but his performance is heartfelt and powerful.

Sibyl Wickersheimer’s set, and Cooper’s direction of the Roman public, is what gives the play new meaning. The set is somehow both sterile and destroyed, making use of wooden slats, folding chairs, and a statue covered with cloth and packing tape. The members of the public caper about dressed in Greek chorus masks, reminiscent of a gang of cannibals in a Mad Max movie. Nothing we are presented onstage implies that ownership of the Roman empire or of the hearts of the people has any value whatsoever, and that the entire course of the play is a series of pointless acts of violence.

Julius Caesar at OSF’s 2017 season strips away the majesty of ancient Rome from the story of several people who murder thousands for vague reasons. It’s a filthy, bleak, depressing rendition that reveals more about Shakespeare’s original text than any production draped in togas.

Julius Caesar runs until October 29th.

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• Julius Caesar OSF Show Page
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Our Comprehensive Coverage of the OSF 2017 Season

• Coverage Overview
• UniSon
• Hannah and the Dread Gazebo
• Julius Caesar
• Henry IV, Part 1
• The Merry Wives of Windsor
• The Odyssey
• Beauty And The Beast

Oregon Shakespeare Festival 2017: Hannah and the Dread Gazebo

Left to right: Cindy Im, Amy Kim Waschke, Sean Jones, Paul Juhn. Photo courtesy Oregon Shakespeare Festival.

The idea of theatre being an accurate representation of reality, unconsciously assumed by playwrights for thousands of years, has been called into question by the newest generation of playwrights. Jiehae Park’s latest work dispenses with these assumptions in order to better deliver its complicated message. Hannah And The Dread Gazebo, which sees its world premiere at OSF this year, twists time, space, memory, and reality to capture the meeting point of heritage, mythology, and identity in the Korean-American experience.

Though the action of Hannah is vaguely linear, it meanders into different places to provide a more complete picture of the characters’ journey. We might take a visit into a lonely subway line to learn the Korean creation myth secondhand, or journey into a dreamland, where resides the ghost of Kim Jong Il. Several long stretches of the play are in Korean, with no supertitles: These dialogue segments are used either to illustrate the difficulties of the English-speaking characters, or as comedy, punctuated with goofy uses of body language.

The plot primarily concerns three generations of a Korean family: the titular Hannah (Cindy Im), a fully Americanized medical student struggling to make sense of her identity; her mother (Amy Kim Waschke), confined and tormented, wanting more in her life but able to mask it with a wry sense of humor; and Hannah’s grandmother (Jessica Ko, who plays a number of other minor roles), who ignites the action of the play by throwing herself off a building and into the Korean demilitarized zone.

Im approaches her role with a kind of beleaguered helplessness: She knows actions aren’t going to alter the Korean political climate enough for her to retrieve her grandmother’s body, nor are they going to lower the language barrier between her and the rest of the country (Hannah barely speaks Korean) or solve her relationship problems. Despite this, though, she refuses to go down without a fight, and combats her absurd situation with kindness and whip-smart sarcasm in turn. Meanwhile, Waschke adapts to her increasingly strange surroundings while still maintaining a sense of bewilderment; despite all the bizarre things that happen, she keeps her emotional development grounded and realistic.

Hannah’s brother Dang (Sean Jones) finds himself on his own journey in a subplot that both confronts him with the mythological origin story of Dangun, the founder of Korea, and allows him to come to terms with developing his own identity in a country where everyone looks like him. While Dang is mainly the comic relief character, juxtaposing important facts about the family with a barrage of swearing, Jones injects a sense of frustration into the role that makes him a more sympathetic character. Dang, of all the characters, has the least idea about what’s going on, but we as the audience aren’t mocking him for it; rather, we understand the unfortunate circumstances that surround him.

The remaining characters in the play serve more to support the development of those more central to the plot, but produce equally excellent performances. Paul Juhn plays Hannah’s father: As the only functional Korean-speaker for the majority of the play, much of the work in finding the grandmother’s body falls to him, and he plays the tragicomic subplot of navigating government bureaucracy with a mixture of outrage and hope. Eunice Hong is a nameless girl who meets with Dang on the street: The role mostly serves to provide information about the DMZ and jokes about overenthusiastic activism, but Hong’s high-energy performance makes her a delight to watch. Jessica Ko’s multiple roles are also great, but because many of them are spoilers, it falls on you to witness her navigate them.

The set, designed by Collette Pollard, matches the mix of tradition and bureaucracy that pervades the play. A gorgeous forest sits behind a gray, square set that – thanks to David Weiner’s lighting work – even lights up at right angles. This conjures images of magic trapped within the confines of society, while also abstractly illustrating the Korean DMZ, a wildlife oasis due to the ongoing cold war between the two countries. The square lighting helps cut the otherwise bare stage into smaller parcels, useful when denoting locations like the subway or Hannah’s mother’s tiny apartment.

Hannah and the Dread Gazebo is a play unconcerned with being “proper”; rather, it departs from the known to better transmit its message of identity, mourning, and ambiguity as part of the Korean-American experience. Its strong cast, playful dialogue, and innovative use of language barriers make it a solid, eclectic work.

Hannah and the Dread Gazebo runs through October 28th.

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• Hannah OSF Show Page
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Our Comprehensive Coverage of the OSF 2017 Season

• Coverage Overview
• UniSon
• Hannah and the Dread Gazebo
• Julius Caesar
• Henry IV, Part 1
• The Merry Wives of Windsor
• The Odyssey
• Beauty And The Beast

Oregon Shakespeare Festival 2017: UniSon

Left to right: Asia Mark, Steven Sapp, Yvette Monique Clark, Kevin Kenerly. Photo courtesy Jenny Graham and the Oregon Shakespeare Festival.

UNIVERSES (Steven Sapp, Mildred Ruiz-Sapp, and William Ruiz) burst onto the Oregon stage in 2012 with their piece Party People, a daring examination of the lives of the Black Panthers and Young Lords. Now, in 2017’s UniSon, they’re using their unique style, which blends emphatic prose, spoken word, light, sound, and movement, to examine and reinterpret the unpublished poetry of the legendary playwright August Wilson. In the midst of a festival dedicated to interpreting and reimagining the works of Shakespeare, it seems fitting that one of the greatest American playwrights gains the same honor.

UniSon has a vague plot, but there’s no conventional story progression or character development. Rather, it uses a series of fragments from Wilson’s poetry to construct a metaphorical tale about an apprentice poet who, Pandora-like, opens a chest from her deceased mentor that he told her to destroy. Within it lies the poet’s failings, pains, and regrets, organized into seven “terrors” – each one represented by a member of the acting company – that give the play structure.

My favorite terror, in an aesthetic sense, is the morbidly funny Butcher (William Ruiz), a hulking figure who killed his wife when he discovered the Poet was sleeping with her. The segment is intense, with Ruiz hoarsely shouting his anger at the world and at his wife as the stage glows bright red and a butchered pig dangles from the ceiling, but its comedic elements make it reminiscent of Sweeney Todd or perhaps OSF’s 2013 The Unfortunates.  Thematically, the most interesting terror is Hunter (Mildred Ruiz-Sapp), who in a haunting tale examines the medium of poetry as a whole and whether a poet has the right to tell other people’s stories for them.

Consistent in every terror is the poet (Steven Sapp) and his distraught apprentice (Asia Mark). Asia Mark remains a terrified outsider, both in her actions and in her language, which is down-to-earth and plain compared to the poetry that surrounds her. Her shock and dismay at discovering, through his hidden work, that her image of the Poet as a kindly father figure was distorted, questions whether it’s right to keep some art hidden. Sapp’s Poet is at times remorseful, at times impishly immune, and at times torn by anguish – especially by the question of his father’s true identity. His development over the course of the play represents both his own acceptance of his past and the Apprentice’s growing understanding of him as a complete person.

The lighting and set design of UniSon is at times as important to the expression of Wilson’s poetry as the actors. Christopher Acebo’s angular set (making heavy use of video effects from Kaitlyn Pietras) juts into the middle of the action, its sharp angles hewing to modern design construction. The set is, in a way, symbolic of the show as a whole, a combination of 20^th-century poetry with UNIVERSES’ postmodern theatre. Alex Jainchills’ lights pulse wildly across the stage, both in the standard top-down lights and through panels installed in the floor: This fully converts the space into whatever the play requires for its emotional expression.

UniSon is not a poetry slam, nor does it meander idly through a garden of August Wilson’s poetry. UNIVERSES has taken the work of one of the greatest American masters of language and, while still paying respect to its origins, synthesized it into a truly astounding piece that questions the need for “public” and “private” art, our views of our own heroes, and the skeletons in the closet of artistic expression that nobody wants to address. When you leave the venue, you’ll be asking a number of questions, both about the show and yourself.

UniSon runs until October 28th.

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• UniSon OSF Show Page
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Our Comprehensive Coverage of the OSF 2017 Season

• Coverage Overview
• UniSon
• Hannah and the Dread Gazebo
• Julius Caesar
• Henry IV, Part 1
• The Merry Wives of Windsor
• The Odyssey
• Beauty And The Beast