The Oregon Shakespeare Festival has two of Shakespeare's plays running currently: MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING and PERICLES. I saw the latter.
The program information notes that PERICLES was, at its debut, a very popular show. Director Joseph Haj attempted to show why in a Thomas Theatre production that featured a good deal of music (by Jack Herrick) and a fair amount of flashy production (credit Jan Chambers' scenic design, Raquel Barreto's costume design, Rui Rita's lighting design, and most especially Francesca Talenti's video and projections).
The story itself featured journeys to multiple locales, searches for lost loves, missed opportunities, assistance from the Goddess Diana (who turns into a statue, a la THE WINTER'S TALE), and a happy ending following much strife. Some of the plot is pretty silly, and Mr. Haj encourages his cast at times to make it even more so. The best of these times featured veteran OSF company member Michael Hume doing a drag turn as the owner of a brothel. The other "best" was the music, anchored by Armando Duran as The Storyteller. Wayne T. Carr anchored the production steadily in the title role, and a cast of ten additional performers doubled and tripled the remaining roles.
SECRET LOVE IN PEACH BLOSSOM LAND opened only recently, and the production still may be finding its footing. Directed by Stan Lai based on a popular Taiwanese play (which, in turn, was based on two sources - a classic Chinese tale of Shangri-La, and a Taiwanese story of re-establishing lost relationships following the resumption of contact between Taiwan and the mainland).
The play is divided into two plays within the overall play. The tearjerker drama is called "Secret Love," and the silly comedy is called "Peach Blossom Land." There is an overarching story that brings these two elements together, and apparently this story changes each time the show is produced (this time is its first in English).
The overarching story here draws on OSF's famous system of scheduling that is carefully created to make certain that company members with separate responsibilities can nevertheless be at all of the rehearsals and events for which they are scheduled. In this case, there's been a snafu and the Bowmer stage has been booked at the same time for a rehearsal of both "Secret Love" and "Peach Blossom Land." Cast and crew can't resolve the conflict, and both groups need the rehearsal, resulting in a certain amount of skullduggery that leads to sharing the space in spurts: first, one group will have it and then another.
The performance styles of the two plays-within-plays are deliberately contrasting, and this difference can take some getting used to, especially in Act 1. It helps to know at least a little about the conventions of Peking Opera, which are featured in "Peach Blossom Land" and which could come across as quite annoying if you didn't realize what was going on.
There's also a fair number of insider jokes about OSF's operations and philosophy (the show couldn't be more "color-blind" cast, leading to more than one on-stage discussion, and I'm sure it's no accident that the clock hanging on stage, which was not running, was set to what turned out to be the exact time that the performance concluded - OSF starts its performances on the dot and times everything). But, to those who may not be festival vets, some of these references might come across as awfully "meta."
Oddly enough, the "glue" that holds the show together comes in the form of a "production assistant" named Flow (Joe Wegner). Flow fills several capacities, including humorously distracting the casts of the two plays when they start duking it out with each other. Flow wears a baseball cap backward, but the high schoolers in the audience would make him right away as not always succeeding in his efforts to be a "cool kid." Even so, he's as funny as they come in this production.
In sum, lots of solid work this trip, but nothing that blew me away, as had been the case on multiple other visits. But, there are six of the eleven planned shows running currently, and there's plenty of time for the magic to take hold.
Bill, headed back to San Diego early Monday
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