It's always exciting when a theater company opens its new season. It's especially exciting when the company also opens a new theater. Such was the case in Ashland, Ore., on March 1, when the Oregon Shakespeare Festival opened both its eight-month season and its New Theatre, a replacement for the much-loved but technically limited Black Swan. The New Theatre, which can be named by anyone with $5 million to donate to OSF, is only steps away from the 140-seat Black Swan, which will be used for rehearsals, etc., but not for performances. Like the Swan, the New Theatre is where the company plans to present new works or harder-edged interpretations of the classics.
It has a larger seating capacity -- 260 to 350 -- and can easily be reconfigured for arena, avenue or thrust staging. It also has infinitely better audience and actor amenities as well as greatly improved technical features. What hasn't been lost is the sense of intimacy, the closeness between actors and audience, that made the Swan a favorite ever since it opened in 1977.
The $10.8 million project, which includes an adjacent parking structure operated by the city, was designed by the architectural firm of Thomas Hacker and Associates of Portland, Ore. The theater space was designed by Richard L. Hay, the festival's principal scenic and theater designer, who also was responsible for the design of the festival's other two theaters, the indoor Angus Bowmer and the outdoor Elizabethan. It's a handsome, welcoming building, not pretentious, but harmonious with its surroundings.
Its grand opening highlighted the season-opening weekend when the company unveiled the first four of 11 plays it will present through Nov. 3. Here's a rundown of that weekend:
Artistic Director Libby Appel made a bold choice in opening the New Theatre with Shakespeare's "Macbeth." Not only is the play associated with many theatrical superstitions, but Appel and dramaturg Lue Morgan Douthit have created a pared-down version that may cause consternation among purists. As Appel explains in her program notes, after the horrors of Sept. 11, she wanted to explore the mind of a murderer and to focus on several other questions such as why his wife would urge him on and what forces determine events after the first act of free will.
She reduces the cast to six actors: one each for Macbeth (G. Valmont Thomas), Lady Macbeth (BW Gonzalez) and Banquo (Jeffrey King) and three others (Suzanne Irving, Terri McMahon and Julie Oda) to play everyone else. Deborah M. Dryden's costumes help effect the character changes with a veil here, a vest there, etc. Appel and Douthit minimize the three witches, or three weird sisters, by cutting their scenes extensively, even eliminating "Double, double toil and trouble."
The play is performed in the round with virtually no scenery or props. Complemented by Robert Peterson's lighting and Todd Barton's music, Richard L. Hay's stage is a raised stone-like disc with a round pool of blood in the center. The characters pay it no heed early on, but as murder follows murder, their faces, hands and clothing are smeared with it, as is the stage. It's a vivid image but perhaps overdone. A very effective device is to treat the audience like guests at the banquet scene.
Except for the intensely focused McMahon, the actors still hadn't fully plumbed the depths of their characters on opening night, but the basics were there, and the play runs all season, giving it lots of time to grow. It's sure to be controversial, but one must admire Appel's bold choices, most of which seem justified.
Laird Williamson can usually be counted on for memorable productions, such as the brilliant "Pericles" he directed for the festival a few seasons back. His "Julius Caesar" won't be so fondly remembered this year. Of course, it's not an easy play, and one must credit Williamson for trying to make it relevant to today's audiences by setting it in the '30s (costumes by Andrew V. Yelusich). Lit by James Vermeulen, Ralph Funicello's set is dominated by movable ramparts made of weapons, armor and other accoutrements of war. It also is interesting to note some parallels with "Macbeth" as "Julius Caesar" explores the consequences of murder, even when the murderers have some higher purpose in mind.
William Langan's Julius Caesar is an expansive politician, while Derrick Lee Weeden's intense Brutus tends to strut. Dan Donohue's Mark Antony is more centered, but his grief upon learning of Caesar's death seems extreme.
Overall, it's the weakest of the season's first four offerings.
The strongest offering of the early season is Robert E. Sherwood's "Idiot's Delight," directed by Peter Amster. Sherwood's play opened in 1936 as Europe edged toward World War II. He sets the action in the cocktail lounge of a less-than-first-class hotel in the Italian Alps near the Swiss and Austrian borders. With hostilities likely to break out at any time and with a nearby Italian air base a likely target, the hotel guests are eager to leave. First they must get clearance from the Italian government, represented by army Captain Locicero (Tony DeBruno), a gentlemanly fellow who's nevertheless bound to follow orders.
The plot focuses on Harry Van (Michael Elich), a brash American who's there with his three gum-chewing chorines, Les Blondes, on their way to their next gig. He's fascinated by another blonde, however, a mysterious Russian named Irene (Robin Goodrin Nordli), who's there with a powerful munitions-maker (Richard Farrell). Other guests are a German doctor (James Edmondson) who thinks he's on the verge of discovering a cure for cancer and some British honeymooners (Gregory Linington and Linda K. Morris).
The play tends to veer all over the stylistic map, going from comedy to polemic (speeches by James Newcomb as an outspoken French communist) with some song and dance. It can be talky, but the skilled cast makes it seem less so. For example, the first scene of Act 2, a long, late-night conversation between Harry and Irene, could be stultifying in lesser hands, but Elich and Nordli mesmerize the audience. The play is also a love story, and ultimately it delivers a strong anti-war message as the terrified guests are caught in the middle of adversarial politics that leads to outright war.
Set designer William Bloodgood's '30s Moderne cocktail lounge looks out on snowy peaks beautifully lit by Lap-Chi Chu. Maria Blumenfeld's costumes are chic, and music director-sound designer Todd Barton's aural effects are sometimes unnervingly real. It's a well-crafted, beautifully acted production that has resonances for post-9/11 audiences.
Completing the opening weekend is a marvelously wacky bit of fluff, Michael Frayn's "Noises Off," skillfully directed by Kenneth Albers. It's an English farce complete with 10 doors (set by Victor A. Becker), a flight of stairs and falling trousers (costumes by Anne Murphy). It's also a backstage comedy focusing an a second-rate traveling troupe performing a sex comedy, "Nothing On." Hence the audience sees not only the play within the play but also the backstage shenanigans and tribulations of actors trying to put on a play and deal with one another's idiosyncracies.
A stellar ensemble cast -- Dee Maaske, Michael J. Hume, David Kelly, Tyler Layton, Becky Meyer Corbett, Richard Howard, Catherine Lynn Davis, Tim Allgood and Richard Elmore -- carries it all off with delicious, energetic aplomb. Each actor creates a richly comic character by underplaying -- a real accomplishment in a silly show like this. It's impossible to single any of them out because of the strong ensemble. Running all season, this show is a sure-fire hit.