Belated Report on OSF

This blog is being written long after our July 12-15 trip to Oregon to see four plays, all by Shakespeare, at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival. We've done this annually for several years now, so we pretty much know Ashland by heart. In fact, a while back we even investigated the possibility of moving there, although the prices of homes and some second thoughts about the weather finally deterred us. Ashland is up in the hills, and even if the winters are far from being as bad as those in Illinois, they would still be cold and snowy. Better to enjoy the place in summer. Instead of flying to Medford out of Mesa, Arizona, as we've done in the past, we flew from Tucson on United. The last leg of the journey was on a Brazilia plane, only the second time in my life I've ever ridden on a prop job. It used to be common wisdom that jets were much safer, so I went to great efforts to avoid props. Although I was still apprehensive, the family behind us, who were also going to OSF, was thrilled--at least the father was, who kept telling his son that this was the way the Wright Brothers intended flight to be. (Technically, then, they should have been riding in a biplane.) While this particular father, obviously upper-class and highly educated, spent the entire trip passing on useful bits of knowledge to his son, another father-son combo we ran into the next day posed a complete contrast. At Liquid Assets, a wine bar where we had dinner, the adjoining booth was occupied by a fortyish man, his preteen kid, and two of the kid's friends. The man was having a glass of wine and telling the boys about his latest traffic ticket, which he received for doing ninety mph, although the cop gave him a break and reduced it to 85 so he would not have to go to court. Father says he has kept all the tickets he's ever received and has a stack that high. What kind of man brags about his traffic tickets to his kid? On the first evening we saw Henry V in the Elizabethan theater. John Tufts, who took the role of Hal in all three plays, was in top form--splendid delivery of both "Once more into the breach" and the "St. Crispin's Day" speech. I was a little disappointed with the wooing scene, though, thinking he should have displayed more charisma. Odd mix of costumes, the French in nineteenth-century dragoon uniforms, Henry and the English in modern dress belonging to several periods. Some liberties were taken with the play, I'm afraid--there is nothing in the text to indicate that Henry himself strangles Bardolph. The following day we attended a matinee of Romeo and Juliet, finishing up on Saturday with a double-header: Troilius and Cressida in the afternoon, As You Like It in the evening. The last two productions were OK but not riveting. OSF persists in the habit of setting plays in every period but Elizabethan England, so Troilius took place during the invasion of Iraq, which was a pretty obvious choice, and As You Like It was in Victorian costume. At this late date, I can't recall anything particularly objectionable about either one. Romeo, however, was another matter. Since the production was part of the ominously named Shakespeare for a New Generation initiative, it was pared down to its essentials and pitched to the intellectual and emotional level of a sixteen-year-old. Romeo bounced around like Tom Cruise on the Oprah Winfrey show. Mercutio's delivery of the Queen Mab speech was so clumsy that one wondered if he knew who Queen Mab was. I could go on but won't. Unfortunately, I read the reviews the next day and was astonished to find that the critics were enthusiastic. I could find only one person who agreed with me and he, too, was a blogger voicing a personal opinion--not someone whose thinking would have any impact on the OSF artistic director. I am giving serious thought to whether we should do this again next year. We've seen just too many clunkers--productions striving for originality, but so hoked up that Shakespeare's verse gets lost in the stage business. One reason I put off blogging about this year's experience was that I wanted to give time for my reactions to jell. My immediate pronouncements on Romeo would have been extremely raw. That said, though,there are other things about Ashland I really like. I love staying at Abbott's Cottages, a small complex of cabins on Oak Street. You're in the middle of town, within walking distance of the OSF theatres, but the cottages are set back against a ravine, and you really feel you're out in the woods.

The last time we were there, I saw three deer walking down the street below the hill on which the cottages are located; this time, we actually had a deer visit us. On the final morning I was carrying the bags out to the car when we saw her nibbling the grass right in front of the cottage. I ran back to get the camera and was just in time to snap this picture as she strolled away. Evidently she isn't too worried about people.

While I'm writing this in October, I'm already looking forward to our plan of travel over the winter: visiting Jeanne and Norm for Thanksgiving (with tickets for Tosca on Sunday afternoon); seeing Daniel after Christmas, then going on to APA in Seattle; and, finally, another cruise with Voyages to Antiquity in January and February, this time to Southeast Asia, where I have never been. I really feel that Ron and I have to do these things while we can, as we don't have that many good years left. Or, at least, that's the excuse I use.