Ninety-nine percent of this year's production of Twelfth Night at OSF is sheer genius.  The set design for its nominal 1930s Hollywood transposition is clever in all the right ways, nearly all the performances are exceptional, and the comic swordfight between Sir Andrew and Viola-as-Cesario gets the single funniest execution I've seen in the 40+ years I've been attending the festival.  (Clearly we'd best not ask how many calla lilies they've gone through since the run started.)

And then we get to the twin-revelation scene, and the magic evaporates.

Now back in 2008, an OSF production of Comedy of Errors attempted the daring stunt of casting one (count him, one) actor in the role of both Antipholuses (Antipholi?), and likewise one (count again, one) actor in the role of both Dromios.  What's more, they made the stunt work -- a very clever bit of staging at the tail end of the play skated around the problem of producing both sets of twins onstage at once. Note to Christopher Liam Moore, director of this year's Twelfth Night: do not try this at home. Or at least if you're going to try it, commit to the premise and run with it.

It's not that Sara Bruner doesn't do a credible job of playing both Viola and Sebastian, though here she is merely very good in a cast where everyone else is outstanding.  Especially high marks go to Ted Deasy for a beautifully dry Malvolio, Danforth Comins for a hilariously high-strung Andrew Aguecheek (all the more remarkable given that Comins' other role this year is the Prince of Denmark himself), and Gina Daniels as Olivia, here imagined as an exotically sultry but reclusive film star.

Part of the problem is technological.  In absolute terms, the screen-projection trickery that allows Bruner to appear in both roles simultaneously is ingenious, and the execution is period-appropriate for the 1930s setting.  But it's also unfortunately primitive (or made to appear so) by comparison to modern film and television standards, and nothing in the run-up to the finale prepares the audience for what amounts to a left turn into pulp-era science fiction at exactly the wrong emotional moment.

More troubling yet, though, is what happens after the magic doubling effect is dismissed.  Bruner is left onstage as Viola/Cesario -- but in the very last moment, finds herself being treated as Viola by Orsino and Sebastian by Olivia, literally pulled in opposite directions at once.  In theory, this is obviously a nod to the questions of gender identity Shakespeare himself raises in the script...but as with the special-effects trickery, there's been no foundation laid for this interpretation of the character(s) anywhere in the preceding two hours.  One can certainly imagine, nowadays, a staging of Twelfth Night in which the "twins" are in fact two minds in one body, with the attendant gender-bending consequences -- but this is not that show.

And as a result, the last few seconds in which it tries to become that show fall absolutely, utterly flat.  Which is frustrating in the extreme, because in nearly every other respect this is a home-run production.

Where issues of sexual politics are concerned, this production of Shrew unabashedly takes its cue from Lucy Van Pelt’s perpetual duel with Charlie Brown – no matter how many times the offer is extended, nobody ever gets to kick that football.  For modern viewers, the text raises the issue over and over – and the present version executes it crisply and energetically, neither apologizing for it nor using stage business to undercut the dialogue.  Which isn’t, in the end, an unreasonable choice.  An honest rendering of Shakespeare’s text, after all, puts fewer barriers and complications in the way as viewers grapple with the play’s take on marriage and women’s issues, letting the play speak more or less for itself.

While the production nominally retains the play’s Italian setting, the specific rendering gives us a mid-20^th century carnival boardwalk, complete with neon, primary-colored signs (“Welcome to Padua”), and a fast-food counter complete with roll-down steel curtain.  There’s also an onstage rock band cranking up musical energy, and the performances are similarly tuned – Kate (Nell Geisslinger) is the brunette Bad Girl, while Bianca  (Royer Bockus) is the squeaky-voiced blonde.  Ted Deasy’s Petruchio mixes more than a bit of Happy Days’ Fonzie with a touch of Elvis and a dash of Evil Knievel, aptly conveying the character’s self-assurance.  The show’s one direct nod to modern cultural sensibilities is the casting of African-American actors Wayne T. Carr and Tyrone Wilson as Lucentio and his father Vincentio, the former Bianca’s love interest; the players take just enough note of this to add texture to the play’s own comic potential without relying on undue stereotype.  There are a handful of other period-related anomalies, one involving Kentucky Fried Chicken and another involving a wickedly funny dueling-video moment between rival suitors Hortensio and Gremio (I’m fairly sure “Let’s zoom in just a skosh, shall we?” isn’t in the original Shakespeare), but for the most part the atmosphere is solidly grounded.

And it’s really a combination of that atmosphere and an emphasis on plot that drives this production, rather than character chemistry.  It isn’t that Deasy and Geisslinger lack chemistry; it’s simply that here, it’s the serial courtship of Kate and Bianca that gets the greatest focus, so that the show is more of an ensemble piece than one often finds in productions of Shrew.  You’ll find more thoughtful stagings than this one, but few with greater overall energy or brisker pacing.  I don't know that this is a genuinely stellar production, but it's a solid and watchable one.

I’ve seen a good many Lears in the years we’ve been visiting Ashland – medieval and modern, spare and opulent, willful and wan.  But I don’t think I’ve ever seen quite so accessible a King Lear as this year’s production.

Not coincidentally, this version is being staged in the Festival’s newest space – it’s finally been named the Thomas Theater, after several seasons of being called simply the “New Theater”.  It’s a small, highly reconfigurable black box – in this case, arranged in the round with just a few furnishings and props. But I’m not using “accessible” in its purely physical sense here, even though that’s part of the show’s success.  Nor am I thinking only of one of the Fool’s first scenes, in which a couple of audience members were briefly drawn into the stage business, though that’s part of it too.

Rather, this is perhaps the first iteration of Lear I’ve seen that seems to me to break unreservedly out of its Shakespearean shell and really connect with its audience on a personal level, irrespective of whether one is a theater buff, a Shakespeare scholar, or a literature geek.  The language is just as it’s always been, so it will satisfy loyalists, but the production as a whole assimilates the language and delivers a show that speaks more viscerally and directly than mere words can convey.

Two performances in particular drive the intimacy: Michael Winters (one of two actors alternating as Lear) is utterly compelling; he balances Shakespeare’s dialogue beautifully with a characterization of Lear that is at once vivid, powerful, and familiar – rarely will you see a Lear described as “charming”, but there are moments here where the word fits, and others where Winters’ delivery is as easy and conversational as you might hear around a card table at your neighborhood senior center.  And young Daisuke Tsuji is a bright, personable, and perceptive Fool, with all the energy of a street comic and the careful precision of a master sensei.  These two stand out among a uniformly excellent cast, and the staging is brisk and energetic, with performers ranging among the audience and into the rafters as the show progresses.  And for all its accessibility, the production doesn’t lose touch with the classic elements that make Lear one of Shakespeare’s most powerful tragedies.

Some of my drama-buff tourmates may disagree (we’ll find out later tonight), but I call this one of the best Lears I’ve seen, period, and not to be missed if the opportunity is available.

This is not your average book recommendation -- but at least some of you may find the following of interest.

As many of this journal's readers are probably aware, I'm a Shakespeare buff.  I have seen most of the canon performed (including Pericles, but not yet Timon, King John, or Henry VIII), and I've read, albeit pretty lightly, in the newer scholarship.  So I was intrigued when I ran across a book recently entitled Contested Will by noted scholar James Shapiro, exploring the minefield that is the Great Authorship Question.



For those not familiar with said minefield: there's a sizeable body of individuals, including academics, noted actors, and Supreme Court justices, who believe that Stratfordian actor William Shakespeare did not write Hamlet, King Lear, or any of the other plays and poems commonly attributed to him -- instead, depending on whose theory one adopts, the Shakespearean canon may be the work of the Earl of Oxford, Christopher Marlowe, Francis Bacon, or any of a host of others (or possibly by a collective of several different writers working in concert).  Of the rival candidates, the most prominent have been Bacon (now mostly discredited) and Oxford, also known as Edward de Vere (now the primary contender).

Contested Will isn't a strictly neutral examination of the controversy; Shapiro acknowledges up front that he's a Stratfordian, and spends roughly the last quarter of the book making his case.  But before he gets to that case, he delivers a concise yet detailed history of the authorship controversy itself, examining the larger context in which the leading alternative theories arose and the lives of the leading proponents of those theories -- notably Delia Bacon, Mark Twain, and Dr. Sigmund Freud.  Shapiro also looks at many of the key books and documents produced and cited by early anti-Stratfordians, discussing not merely their conclusions but the thought processes that lie behind them.  There's briefer but no less observant coverage of more contemporary developments, including televised "moot court" trials and Internet authorship-studies sites defending both sides of the conflict.  A thorough bibliographic essay provides extensive annotations and avenues for further reading.

The authorship debate being what it is (and judging by the online responses to published reviews), Contested Will isn't likely to convince devoted Oxfordians to abandon their cause -- though I'd recommend it to them nonetheless.  Some of the source material Shapiro examines is either quite recently discovered or notably obscure, and a few of his analytical barbs are aimed -- if gently -- at traditionalists as much as at anti-Stratfordians.  I'd also recommend the book to anyone with a broad interest in Shakespearean lore and literature; Shapiro's prose is engaging and his style is accessible, with little recourse to academic jargon. 

For those interested in exploring the authorship controversy more generally, two sites:
For the Stratfordian case: Shakespeare Authorship
For the anti-Stratfordian case: Shakespearean Authorship Trust

While most of the rest of the world seems to have been at Worldcon, I was on my annual pilgrimage to Ashland, Oregon for a five-play weekend marathon at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival.  The short report: three winners, one take-it-or-leave-it, and one unexpected clunker. 

More detailed comments will follow as the week progresses; I should also have some notes on the ongoing Sony Reader Test Drive and possibly a further book review or two.  In the meantime, two links:

My comments from last week on Patricia Wrede's Thirteenth Child

A contest: if you have $100 to spare and the right culinary mindset, you can win a landmark Oregon restaurant