The 2010 Oregon Shakespeare Festival.

Shurgot, Michael W.

To observe the seventy-fifth anniversary of the Oregon Shakespeare Festival Artistic Director Bill Rauch staged the two plays of the festival s inaugural season--Twelfth Night and The Merchant of Venice--plus 1 Henry IV and Hamlet. In all four plays, especially Bill Rauch's brilliant Hamlet, the generally excellent acting in major roles, inventive (if somewhat bizarre) sets, robust ensemble work, superb lighting and sound, and challenging interpretations not only created inspiring and memorable productions bur also set single season attendance and revenue records.

Director Darko Tresnjak, who came to the OSF from San Diego's Old Globe Theatre, ser Twelfth Night in the late Baroque 1700s. Tresnjak explains that this decision came from his love of directing Mozart's operas; he sees The Marriage of Figaro as almost a companion piece for Shakespeare's comedy of "romance and rudeness." (2) Tresnjak labels Twelfth Night Shakespeare's "most sensual play," and he equates it with the "sexiness of the Baroque period." (3) While the characters wore sumptuous, aristocratic attire, and early classical music often accompanied the performance, any connection between Tresnjak's production concept and the actual set was puzzling. Scenic designer David Zinn covered the stage in huge swaths of green artificial turf that one might see on an athletic field. Several pillars stage left and right looked like scratching posts for gigantic cats, while reaching from the bottom to nearly the top of the stage facade was a huge turf-covered rectangle with sloping sides that several characters slid down in childish joy. This shape slightly resembled a musical note and perhaps was meant to suggest a Mozartian score. Characters entered and exited through the large opening in this rectangle, and a smaller opening at the top of the structure became the box tree through which Toby et al. watched Malvolio discover Maria's forged letter. Perhaps the very artificiality of this material was its point: a setting for "romance and rudeness" in an illusory place at the edge of festivity where artificially enhanced and prolonged human emotions dominate the stage. Then, too, maybe a hardware store in Ashland had a big sale on Astro Turf, or a putt-putt golf course closed and sold its turf.

Tresnjak reversed the play's initial two scenes. As smoke billowed from the rectangle and crashing noises filled the theater, Viola stumbled through the opening in an elaborate blue cape and wet dress. She carried a large chest from which she delivered gold to the Captain. Overwhelmed by his own desires and convinced of his irresistible charm, Kenajuan Bentley as Duke Orsino gazed lovingly at Olivia's picture. Sir Toby, already disheveled from a night of boozing, entered holding an ice bag to his aching head that Maria's scolding worsened. Rex Young as Sir Andrew Aguecheek was as pathetic, hilarious, and sexually naive as he was tall and skinny. Robin Goodrin Nordli, a most attractive Maria, stuck his hand into her bosom, materializing the invitation to "bring your hand to the buttery-bar and let it drink." (4) Young froze before yanking his hand free. Later, Toby and Fabian, watching from above as Malvolio read aloud Marias letter, spelled out C-U-T to Aguecheek in pantomime, and when he finally understood, be slapped his forehead and fainted backwards. A doomed lover, Sir Andrew provided ample comic relief as the rogues' treatment of Malvolio darkened the play.

The vivid contrasts in costumes and mannerisms between Christopher Liam Moore as Malvolio and Michael Elich as Feste emphasized the wide spectrum of characters and attitudes in the play. Malvolio was dressed in the most formal of Batoque attire: black shoes, grey wool stockings, white shirt with flowery cuffs, elegant black coat and tails, pressed ruff about his neck, and hair pulled back severely and tied in a bun. He moved rigidly, as if deciding which bone to activate, and spoke with a pronounced formality. Conversely, amid the elegance of the Baroque costumes, Michael Elich was an intriguing Feste straight from the commedia dell'arte. Dressed in the Harlequin's motley, including a prominent red codpiece and flesh-colored mask, Elich moved deftly, sang beautifully, observed intently, and suggested not only the Renaissance court jester but also an otherworldly observer mining human folly to serve his wit and fill his purse. Whether proving Olivia a fool for mourning her brother's soul or driving Malvolio mad, Feste delighted altogether in ridiculing Illyrians.

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The major crux in staging Twelfth Night is convincing spectators of the genuineness of the romantic relationships in act five. Orsino's love of being in love was evident in his languid evocation of the "spirit of love" and again when describing to Cesario his "passion of love" in 1.4. Brooke Parks as Viola was sufficiently ambiguous as Cesario in a gentleman's white pants and stockings, black shoes, white shirt and ruff, and dark blue, gold-embroidered coat to suggest a beautiful young man whom Olivia might crave. Olivia greeted Cesario in black veil and gown surrounded by three ladies also in black, but the bright colors of Cesario's clothes and the energy of her speech quickly wowed Olivia. Cesario pranced around the stage in 1.5, especially during her "willow cabin" speech (263-71), as if visualizing the "skipping ... dialogue" (197) that combines lines from Orsino with her own impassioned reaction to Olivia's beauty. The more eloquent Cesario's speech became the more rapidly Olivia waved her fan, as if cooling her long-dormant sexual energy. By "'Not too tast! Soft, soft!" (288), Olivia was near to breaking her wrist with fan waving. In 3.1 Olivia greeted Cesario in a bright pink, low cut, high-Baroque party dress. She pursued Cesario around the stage and when she finally caught "him" she held him up dose and blurted her love so passionately that while she was now clearly out of her lethargy one had to wonder how she could accept a mere look-alike substitute in act five. Ironically the more convincing this scene between the two women the more puzzling is the "resolution" in act five.

In 2.4, when Orsino is at his narcissistic worse (There is no woman's sides / Can bide the beating of so strong a passion / As love doth give my heart; no woman's heart / So big, to hold so much" [93-96]), be and Cesario, accompanied by a lovely duet of flute and violin, sat closely together on pillows stage right as Orsino lectured Cesario. The more foolish Orsino's words became the closer Cesario leaned toward him, until by his/ her "Too well what love women to men may owe" (105) their shoulders touched. It was a lovely moment, and for just an instant Orsino looked into Cesario's eyes as if detecting there a mystery he had not yet fathomed. Orsino spoke firmly when they stood and he sent her back to Olivia, but in this moment, the last time we see them together before act five, Bentley and Parks created just enough ambiguity about the nature of the characters' relationship to suggest some basis for Orsino's sudden desire for Viola in act five.

The caterwauling of 2.3 was loud, bawdy, and surprisingly complex. After Toby's call for a stoup of wine Feste entered carrying a lantern, as if lighting fools' way to knavery. Yet there was obvious melancholy in his singing of the transience of youth, a reminder to Toby, Maria, and us of the corrosive pressure of time and of the necessary end of festivity, for this scene carries us past midnight of January 6. Amid bottles and cushions strewn all around the stage, Malvolio, wearing only his white sleeping gown and black shoes, and with curlers in his hair (lest one hair get out of place while he slept), tiptoed into the party from stage left and chastised the lot of them in the clipped cadence of a scoutmaster. Toby et al. reacted with lewd gestures and loud curses, and in the stark contrast between drunken revelry and Malvolio's strictness originated his cruel abuse in act four.

Toby's and Maria's plots were hilarious. Malvolio, already convinced that "Fortune" now favored him, sauntered into 2.5 waving a white handkerchief and flitting his arms about. Feste climbed the stage right scratching pole, while Toby, Fabian, and Aguecheek peered down from the narrow opening in the green carpet. Malvolio's exaggerated gestures as he acted out his new role as Olivia's lover and boss of the "little people" externalized his growing pride, and his slow, deliberate "crushing" of M.O.A.I. brilliantly anticipated the longest developing smile I have ever seen. He ended the scene by doing a somersault in the most un-Malvolio-like moment imaginable! When he reappeared in 3.4, he was cross-gartered and yellowed to the motley nines. With lipstick and painted cheeks, he had transformed himself into a doll for Olivia to play with, a man turned inside out by imagined desire. Fabian's "Why, we shall make him mad indeed" (3.4.135) was gleeful, and in 4.2 Fabian's prediction was fulfilled. Malvolio was confined in a huge bird cage, his glorious orange coat ripped and his precious yellow stockings "fouled, / Ungartered, and down-gyved to his ankle" (Hamlet, 2.1.81-82). The (play)house was indeed dark, and red backlighting suggesting a hellish madness enveloped the stage. Malvolio clung to the bars of his cage like a deranged animal as he whimpered and begged Topas for pen and paper and pleaded, against all evidence, for his sanity.

Andrew fared no better. When in their initial "combat" Cesario lightly conked Andrew atop his helmet, he promptly fainted. He last appeared with Toby, bloodied and ragged, in the opening above the stage from which they had overseen Malvolio's descent into folly. Christian Barillas as Sebastian burst onstage through the opening in the green carpet in 4.3 just as Viola had done in the first scene. He was wearing only white knee-length pants that just barely clung to his hips. Olivia had asked him at the end of 4.1 if he would be ruled by her, and he had obviously complied with her wildest wishes. On Olivia's "Blame not this haste of mine" (4.3.22), spectators roared. The "sexiness of the Baroque period" translated here into a sexual union between Olivia and a man she has just met who she thinks is somebody else and whom she has not yet married. Sex first, then marriage; details to be sorted later. As a prelude to act five, this choice complemented Olivia's lusty pursuit of Cesario and indicates what can happen when human sexual desires are throttled for too long.

However, this production choice also complicated Olivia's actions in act five. Her initial confusion when Cesario walks onstage and she calls him "husband" again suggests that what is paramount in this play is the phenomenon of desire itself, rather than the specific object (or gender) of one's desire. This notion was emphasized when Orsino became extremely angry at Cesario, threatening to kill "what I love" (5.1.117), and then moments later, after the pairing of Sebastian and Olivia, asks to see "her" in her woman's weeds. "If this were played upon a stage, now, I could / condemn it as an improbable fiction" (3.4.129-30). Fabian's words, spoken appropriately by one of the play's clowns, reify both the improbability of the play's conclusion and the fragile nature of joy when human endeavors strain the sinews of festivity.

Malvolio's reentrance chilled the scene. Ragged, with his hair down around his neck, he hissed his questions to Olivia. Feste danced around Malvolio as be spoke of the whirligig of time and enjoyed his revenge, as we knew he would. Enraged, Malvolio paused, then slowly turned toward the spectators and uttered his threat of revenge against the "pack" of his tormentors. We who had sat in this "dark [play]house" had been part of his tormenting because we had enjoyed watching it, and only the artificiality of theater allowed us to escape his wrath. Given Feste's supple maneuvering, having the entire company reenter to sing together what is clearly Feste's song was jarring. Elich's brilliant creation of Feste's aloof mannerisms and inquisitive mind deserved a solo performance of these melancholic lines.

According to OSF's Prologue, Anthony Heald insisted during a company discussion in early 2009 that the Festival should not on any account stage The Merchant of Venice in 2010. Several weeks later Heald changed his mind after Bill Raauch, who directed Merchant, offered him the role of Shylock. Heald, who is the first Jewish actor to play Shylock at OSF, remarked: "I wanted to be part of whatever decisions were made in how to do the play and how to handle the character [of Shylock]." (5) Working with Rauch and a generally strong cast, Heald created a memorable portrait of a deeply troubled and severely damaged outsider in a putative comedy filled with calculating and often vicious Christians whose claim to moral superiority at play's end remained dubious.

Richard Hay's set was simple yet marvelously symbolic. Attached to the top of the stage facade was a golden sailing ship, certainly Antonio's but also suggesting those of other traders in Renaissance Venice. Below the ship was a large clock whose hands often moved during the performance. The moving hands symbolized not only the passage of time but also, as characters began appearing in modern dress, the movement of the action forward to our own post-Holocaust era in which this play, with its focus on the malignant effects of religious prejudice, bears such enormous significance. Beneath the clock, just above the main entrance to backstage, hung a large green cross symbolizing, as does the huge statue of Christ in Baz Luhrmann's William Shakespeare's Romeo + Juliet, the ostensible Christian ethos of the play. Large globular lights hung from the upper stage. Center stage a dais supported a judge's bench, and downstage were two small tables with chairs where Shylock would eventually meet Antonio and Bassanio in a cafe. Initially, microphones stood at the judge's bench and on the two tables, a clear indication that this production would span several centuries.

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In the opening tableau, Vilma Silvas Portia entered as Balthasar in her doctor's black robes and stood in front of Shylock and Antonio (Jonathan Haugen). Speaking into the mike on the judge's bench, she intoned: "Which is the merchant here and which the Jew?" (4.1.172). Standing stage left were two nuns, choric figures who reappeared in 4.1. Then suddenly the stage went black, a spotlight showed the hands of the clock whirling, and we emerged into 1.1. Stage left a red illuminated sign read "Barber" as Antonio sat for a haircut and engaged his youthful companions in their Edwardian brocade coats and trousers. Antonio's "Fie, fie!" (1.1.46) suggested what became clear in act five: Antonio's deep love of Bassanio (Danforth Comins). Gregory Linington as Gratiano, dressed more casually, was the clamorous rebel of the group who looked and sounded as if he had recently received a severe electrical shock. Antonio winced and looked away as Bassanio showed him Portia's picture, yet he strongly encouraged Bassanio to seek the lady so "richly left" (1.1.161).

The initial meeting between Shylock, Antonio, and Bassanio in 1.3 clearly established the parameters of their relationships. Shylock dressed in dark trousers, white shirt, black damask brocade jacket under his coat, and yarmulke. Heald eschewed an obviously "Jewish accent," which he considered an unacceptable stereotype, and spoke as fluidly as his Christian colleagues. A major question about Shylock in 1.3 is whether he means what he says about wanting to be friends with Antonio and "have [his] love" (136), for he does extend friendship to Antonio and begs him "wrong me not" (169). Heald noted that for him the key to playing Shylock was to see him as "want[ing] to be reasonable, to be assimilated, to bridge this gap of animosity that separates him from Antonio and society," yet as having "deep-seated psychological problems." (6) Thus, in his initial dialogue with Antonio Heald sincerely pleaded for his love and friendship; he spoke without any of the sarcasm that might indicate that Shylock does not desire an amicable relationship and business dealings with Antonio. Yet in his aside "How like a fawning publican he looks" (38-49), Shylock seethed with hatred, and in "But more for that in low simplicity / He lends out money and brings down / The rate of usance here with us in Venice" (40-42) Heald stressed "But" to indicate the monetary basis for much of Shylock's hatred of the man who undercuts the only business that a Jew could legally pursue in Renaissance Italy. Heald spoke this aside to spectators, as if to explain to us the personal and professional basis of his hatred, but then he became jovial and ordered coffee for both Bassanio and Antonio as he spoke of Jacob's thriving with his sheep.

Only when Antonio quipped that "The devil can cite Scripture for his purpose" (96), an insult not only to Shylock personally but also to his cherished religious text, did Shylock's tone radically change. Heald moved upstage, stood above the sitting Antonio, and lashed out at him bitterly about his previously spitting upon Shylock's "Jewish gaberdine" (110), and then with biting sarcasm asked if the dog Jew ought to "bend low, and in a bondman's key" (121) lend Antonio so much moneys. Given Heald's belief that initially Shylock desires reconciliation with and inclusion in Antonio's society, the sudden turn in his voice and predatory-like stalking demonstrated how dangerous Shylock could be should his hatred be tipped any further. After Antonio's "I am as like to call thee so again, / To spit on thee again, to spurn thee too" (128-29), Heald lapsed into the grinning, jovial businessman who comically mocked the terms of his own proposed bond. He slapped Antonio's shoulder when he agreed to sign the bond, and on Shylock's "And for my love, I pray you, wrong me not" (169), with its implied threat, Shylock and Antonio shook hands. Waving at the Christians from whom he had received so much abuse, Shylock appeared happy at having found a way to accommodate them, lest they abuse him further. Heald's superb performance in this scene penetrated deeply into the maze of Shylock's character and motivation.

Vilma Silva as Portia was immensely impatient with her father's fairy-tale will. She was also immensely well-dressed in a blue brocade gown, blue and gold cape, diamond necklace, and silver tiara; richly left, indeed. Both Peter Macon as Prince of Morocco and Armando Duran as Prince of Aragon spoke with exaggerated accents, emphasizing their foreignness. Morocio was accompanied by a woman in a full-body burka whom he inexplicably left behind in Portia's court, and Aragon strode around the caskets accompanied by a flamenco guitarist. Both were duly astonished by their poor choices, and after Morocco left, Portia's "Let all of his [stressed] complexion choose me so" (2.7.79) exemplified the prejudice that pervades this play.

Launcelot wore jeans, a ragged sweatshirt and rubber boots, and Old Gobbo, in a tattered coat and crumbled fedora, stumbled around the stage looking for his son to give him the basket of doves that he has brought for Shylock. With the Christian cross highlighted above the stage the revelers met in a church and stood behind a railing chewing communion wafers as if they were pretzels at a football match. The cynicism of this scene was chilling, as if this sacred place blessed their "stealing" of Jessica and her father's ducats. Emily Sophia Knapp as Jessica stood above as Lorenzo et al. planned their cscapade. (In a fine visual touch, Gratiano held Old Gobbo's basket that Launcelot had offered to Bassanio. Given Gratiano's rage at Shylock in 4.1, how bitterly ironic that Old Gobbo's basket, which initially contained a peace offering to Shylock, should end up in Gratiano's hands!) Jessica obviously detested her fatber, whose money bags she eagerly hurled to Lorenzo below as he and his cronies drifted across the stage in a gondola. She showed no regrets at leaving her father and believed firmly that "I shall be saved by my husband. He hath made / me a Christian" (3.5.17-18). Her initial joy and conviction only heightened the sadness with which she heard of her father's fate in act five. In a superb directorial choice, Rauch had Shylock and Antonio pass each other on the darkened stage, Antonio searching for Gratiano and Shylock about to learn that his daughter--and his ducats--are gone.

3.1 was stunning. A long steel railing spanned the entire front of the stage. Soft floodlights from below the front of the stage illuminated the semi-darkness. Shylock entered from the stage right vomitorium and walked to the middle of the railing that now suggested a bridge over a Venetian canal, the route of Jessica's and Lorenzo's escape. The floodlights cast Shylock's shadow upon the facade where hung the large cross, creating a stark contrast. Solanio and Salerio, who had mocked Shylock's cries of his daughter and his ducats in 2.8, stood behind him stage left reading newspapers and eating ice cream cones. Here Rauch made a startling choice. Shylock initially turned toward Solanio and Salerio at "You knew, none so well, none so well as / you, of my daughter's flight" (22-23), with marked emphasis on each "you." However, for the rest of his dialogue with them Shylock faced the audience, showing his disdain for these slimy bigots but also suggesting our complicity in Jessica's escape. Salerio's grotesque assertion that "There is more difference between thy flesh and / hers than between jet and ivory ..." (36-37) incensed Shylock, and Heald spoke Shylock's "To bait fish withal" (50-69) with increasing tension. He gripped the railing as if trying to prevent himself from physically attacking Salerio and Solanio, an action he knew would be suicidal. By "Hath not a Jew eyes" (55-56) Heald's entire body trembled in one of the most painful and wrenching performances of this speech I have ever heard. Only the entrance of Tubal saved Shylock from complete emotional collapse. Since the deaf actor Howie Seago played Tubal, Heald and Seago incorporated American Sign Language into their dialogue. Rauch, Heald and Seago thus turned what might seem like a liability (a deaf actor) into a theatrical triumph. As Heald spoke aloud both his and Tubal's words, while signing his words to Seago, the scene became a frightening dialogue within a deranged Shylock: one part infuriated by the loss of his daughter and his ducats, the other thrilled to hear of Antonio's losses. Finally, as he screamed, "I would my daughter were / dead [stressed] at my foot, and the jewels in her ear" (83-84), Shylock signaled the moment when he determined to fulfill his lethal bond with Antonio. Death for death. Heald's performance throughout this scene was brilliant. By its end, his earlier hope for reconciliation with the Christians now completely shattered, Shylock quivered at the edge of madness as he strode defiantly toward his synagogue. (7)

Portia coyly waltzed around Bassanio in a kind of verbal and physical foreplay as he deliberated, and when he chose correctly the whole gathering erupted. As if sexually teasing him Portia removed her cape as she gave him the ring that he would later give away to the "doctor." After Jessica's festive joy at leaving Shylock, Gratiano's "But who comes here? Lorenzo and his infidel" (3.2.217) was jarring, and Jessica stood apart stage right as she related what she had heard her father say to Tubal and Chus about preferring Antonio's flesh to "twenty times" the value of the bond. Portia's easy dismissal of the debt owed to Antonio solidified one's sense of how little money meant to her.

In 4.1, as in the opening tableau, a dais center stage supported the judge's bench, and several small tables, each with a microphone, framed the courtroom. Two nuns stood stage left, as if ensuring a Christian presence in the courtroom. Shylock entered stage right holding a balance and a small valise from which he later withdrew a knife and a white apron. (Tying this apron around his waist created a grotesque image: Shylock as butcher.) Antonio entered stage left and sat at a table. Bassanio, Gratiano, and Salerio also entered stage left and carried beer bottles (apparently from the journey back from Belmont) which they carelessly threw on the floor. Bassanio, either overwhelmed by what his "pure innocence" had wrought or drunk, or both, vomited. He and Gratiano also carried several money bags (resembling Jessica's from 2.4) that they angrily threw at Shylock's feet when Balthasar asked about paying the bond. Rejecting any impulse towards mercy, Shylock spoke firmly about his bond and directed his accusations about "purchased slaves" (4.1.90) toward us, as if they were ours.

Balthasar, in judicial black robes, strode around the stage holding one of the portable mikes; she delivered her sermon on mercy as a scholarly lesson as much to us as to the assembled court. Shylock, standing above Antonio's bate chest and trembling after being reminded of his daughter's flight with a "Christian husband" (293), slowly lowered the knife and, with brilliant timing, pulled it back to thrust at Antonio just as Balthasar blurted "Tarry a little" (303). Spectators gasped, and for a terrifying split second I actually thought Shylock would plunge that knife into Antonio's bosom. Suddenly sensing his peril, Shylock remained bent over Antonio as Balthasar eviscerated his bond and mockingly asked him why he paused. Defeated, Shylock dropped the knife, slowly removed his apron, and then fell to his knees. As she detailed his submission to Venetian law and that law's purported mercy, Balthasar ironically returned the knife to Shylock. Then, in an immensely cruel gesture, on Antonio's "Two things provided more: that for this favor / He presently become a Christian" (384-85), a nun walked toward Shylock and removed his yarmulke. One of the main themes of this complex and difficult play is the hypocrisy of those who mistakenly assume righteousness merely because they constitute a majority, and this gesture brutally illustrated that theme. As the Christians left the court they celebrated with handshakes and shouts, as if at a sporting match. They left the beer bottles but took the money bags.

After the emotional power of 4.1, the resolution of the romantic themes seemed anti-climactic. Lorenzo and Jessica were drinking wine in 5.1, and Jessica's last line, "I am never merry when I hear sweet music" (69), a reminder of her father's criticism of the "vile squealing of the wry-necked fife" (2.5.31), foretold her end; she stood alone stage right as Nerissa gave Lorenzo the "special deed of gift" from "the rich Jew" (292) who is now neither rich nora Jew. (In Jessica's presence, this line has always seemed to me deliberately cruel and certainly was so here.) Portia and Nerissa entered from the stage right vomitorium, as from among us who had witnessed the court scene. Portia's statement about a "good deed in a naughty world" (91) and her assertion that "Nothing is good, I see without respect" (99) was especially apt after the vivid staging of 4.1.8 Portia and Nerissa claimed their moral victory over their (apparently) wayward husbands, and the couples disappeared into the darkness where love is consummated. Jessica hesitated, kissed Lorenzo lightly, and then they followed. But her hesitation was enough to remind us from whom they had received their gift. Antonio remained alone stage left as the hands of the clock spun backward, returning us to Renaissance Venice and reminding us of the long history of human prejudice.

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Director Penny Metropulos set her 1 Henry IV firmly in the fifteenth century, with doublet, hose, bucklers, shields and the Boar's Head: no time traveling here. On checkerboard patterns suggesting games of skill, scenic designer Michael Ganio erected huge photographs of sword hilts, the English crown, and a crucifix. Like Merchant, I HIV opened with a tableau, this one taken from 4.1 of Richard II. On the upper stage Cristofer Jean as Richard, in a long white gown, extended the crown to Richard

Howard, then Bolingbroke and soon King Henry, who seized it, pulled it from Richard's hand, and then placed it on his head as Richard laughed. Lights out, and seconds later Howard, resplendent in royal apparel, appeared downstage center to begin the play proper.

Howard's bearing and voice effused authority and stateliness, the perfect antidote to David Kelly's slovenly Falstaff. After the king's complaints to Westmoreland, a hand moved aside a J red curtain in front of the upper chamber, the space where moments before Bolingbroke had seized the crown. The hand belonged to John Tufts's Hal, and behind the curtain was a bed from which he and a young girl, both mostly undressed, slowly emerged. As Hal stretched and the girl straightened the sheets, the huge lump at the foot of the bed began to move, and Falstaff crawled out from under a grotesque menage a trois. Thus did the heir apparent spend his time while Hotspur killed six or seven Scots before breakfast. Throughout the production Kelly played Falstaff with an astonishing joie de vivre and an absolute conviction that Hal could not possibly resist him. Thus even in their initial scene together, though Falstaff speaks to Hal of "when thou art king" (1.2.16), Kelly treated words like "time," "hanging," and "thief" as just so many witticisms to be bandied about with Hal like tennis balls--or young ladies of the tavern. Hal--the "most comparative, rascalliest, sweet young prince" (79-80)--clearly enjoyed Falstaff's wit and knew exactly how Falstaff would react to his suggestion to steal a purse. After plotting with Poins, played by Howie Seago, whose words Hal signed as Shylock did Tubal's, Hal spoke his soliloquy "I know you all" (189ff) with no hint of irony or emotional distress. He smiled as he imagined breaking through the "base contagious clouds" (192) and of his "reformation, glittering o'er my fault" (207). Although he may regret having to pay the debt he never promised (stressed at 203), Hal moved downstage center to convince us that he would willingly bow to time even if that word meant nothing to Falstaff. While this reading of Hal's soliloquy might seem to simplify what can be played as emotionally complex, Tufts's version was nonetheless a theatrically clear statement of a young prince as calculating as his father had been in Richard II. The mask that Poins offered Hal to conceal their identities at Gad's Hill became a fitting symbol for Hal.

Kevin Kenerly as the fiery Hotspur was a perfect foil to Hal. Kenerly is a short, compact, muscular actor with a booming voice whose rapid delivery contrasted sharply with Hal's lethargy in 1.2. He thundered his complaints against Henry in 1.3, exasperated Northumberland and Worcester, and in 2.3 drove Lady Percy to tears with his evasions. She too was capable of anger, throwing his armor to the ground and pounding his chest when he would not tell her where he was going or why. Metropulos created poignant domestic scenes that stressed the human cost of war. Hotspur ridiculed Glendower, who was dressed as a magus, and his tales of his nativity and ability to call spirits from the "vasty deep" (51). Yet after their nasty quarrel over the map of Britain, Lady Mortimer and Lady Percy entered and the rebels lay down on cushions to listen to Lady Mortimer, accompanied by harps, sing beautifully in Welsh. qhe women cried as their soldiers headed off to war and "honor." Hotspur earlier "O, let the hours be short / Till fields and blows and groans applaud our sport" (1.3.299-300) suddenly seemed puerile amid such loveliness.

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In marked contrast to Hotspur's darting around the stage, Falstaff lumbered through the robbery. He did lay down his fat guts to hear if travelers were coming and took several hilarious seconds to rise. Falstaff roared mightily when Hal and Poins "attacked" and hobbled into the Boar's Head in 2.4. Hal's game with Francis kept Falstaff waiting at the tavern door, and when he finally entered he was clearly furious at having been locked out of his own inn. Falstaff wore several ripped shirts over his orange and brown doublet, evidence of his battles with fifty-plus ruthless villains. Falstaff careened around the tavern describing his exploits, and as his tale of bravery expanded, so too did Hal's obvious enjoyment of the fat knight. Kelly played Falstaff as so caught up in the sheer joy of his spontaneous bragging that when Hal exposed Falstaff's lies as "gross as a mountain, open, palpable" (224), the game of insults that follows immediately became a further example of the inexhaustible wit and verbal dexterity that so endear Falstaff to Hal. Falstaff's narration was all a game played upon "instinct," rather than a calculated strategy that Falstaff really thought Hal would believe. Even Falstaff's attempt at naming the rebels dissolved into witty ripostes (330-55) that both deeply enjoyed. Thus ended act one of the play-within-a-play. But, since Gravity has the impertinency to be out of his bed at midnight, "Thy father's [Falstaff's] beard is turned white with the news" (355-56), and Hal will now be summoned to the court in the morning, "If you love me, / practice an answer" (370-71). Kelly made this sequence seem perfectly logical to Falstaff, and every bit of it depended on his ability to create whole worlds--in all of which he is the center--from mere words. While one cannot know what Shakespeare might have wanted us to think is Falstaff's actual motivation in this scene, Kelly's choices made his interpretation of Falstaff's actions perfectly dear.

Act two of the play let was equally entertaining. So as to look more kingly, Falstaff ripped off his filthy dowlas, perched a metal bowl upside down on his head, and preached with regal manliness: a king of misrule fabricating royal authority. Hal sat on a chair to Falstaff's right, and in a brilliant visual touch Falstaff offered Hal the metal bowl. As Hal grabbed it, Falstaff, like Richard II, refused to let go, so that Hal, like his father, had to "seize the crown." This moment identified Hal as being of the "blood royal": father and son are both thieves of the (real and mock) crown, and the king of England is only a harlotry player in a grubby tavern.

Hal wore the same dirty shirt to meet his father in 3.2 that he had been wearing when he crawled out of bed with Falstaff and their girl. So much for protocol at court. Tufts showed more verbal and emotional range in this scene than I had seen from him in other productions. Hal's reformation seemed at hand, and significantly when he returned to the tavern in 3.3 it was mostly empty. The riff-raff had been conscripted for war and would be peppered on Shrewsbury Field. Falstaff's insisting that Hal owed him his love, and that the "days of villainy" (167) were to blame for his "frailty" (168), led to Hal's enduring, if slightly exasperated, "Oh my sweet beef, I must still be good angel to / thee. The money is paid back" (177-78). Tufts's tone signaled that while the court and his father had called, sweetness still lay in Eastcheap.

In act four, Kenerly as Hotspur, Jeffrey King as Douglas, and James Newcomb as Worcester superbly kept spectators involved in the historical circumstances of this play. Indeed, Newcomb, whose vocal range and intensity are magnificent, raised Worcester to tragic status. He pleaded earnestly with Hotspur to wait for reinforcements in 4.1, and argued passionately with Vernon in 5.2 not to tell Hotspur of King Henry's offer to embrace and befriend the rebels, himself included. Not to be outdone, Kelly delivered with absolute conviction and not a shred of remorse Falstaff's soliloquy in 4.2 about the "commodity of warm slaves" (4.2.17-18) who appeared behind him carrying brooms and pitchforks. The verbal energy from both sets of thieves in act four, who as Hotspur learns cannot be true to one another, established superbly the contrasting views of honor and chivalry about to unfold.

Battle scenes engulfed the theater as soldiers entered from stage left and right and the two vomitoria. When Falstaff handed Hal his "pistol" that would sack a city, Hal was genuinely furious for the first time in the play, and Falstaff's waddling offstage in pursuit of "life" suddenly seemed pathetic. Falstaff collapsed stage left before Douglas's sword, and then the fight between Hal and Hotspur became tremendously athletic, a testament to the two actors' physical skills and stamina. After Hal finally stabbed Hotspur he knelt beside him and held him in his arms for his obsequies, emphasizing the sense of waste in Hotspur's ill-woven ambition. Hal rose, turned to leave, and then, spotting Falstaff, went to him and knelt again. Hal affectionately kissed his forehead, a gesture reminiscent of his checking on Falstaff's breathing while he slept at the end of 2.4, and then exited an eerily quiet stage.

Kelly remained immobile for several seconds and thus created a pregnant silence that gained humor and impact from its duration. Suddenly, Falstaff shouted "Emboweled" (5.4.111), arose laboriously, and triumphantly reclaimed the stage. He grotesquely stabbed Hotspur and, as he had done in his "narration" of Gad's Hill in 2.4, again reinvented history: "There is Percy.... If your father will do me / any honor, so; if not, let him kill the next Percy himself" (138-41). He knows that none will confute him; why would we? Being of the devil's party, we want more of this fat rogue, and our eyes see nothing amiss. Kelly reveled in the reclaimed verbal energy and inventiveness of Falstaff that keeps his enigmatic theatrical character so wonderfully alive.

The gem of the 2010 season, and one of the most riveting Shakespeare productions I have ever seen, was Bill Rauch's staging of a contemporary Hamlet in the Angus Bowmer Theatre. As one who has argued that many of OSF's "concept-driven" productions have denuded the Shakespearean script and produced theatrical mishmash, I was absolutely thrilled that here Rauch and his colleagues produced as coherent a contemporary interpretation of a Shakespearean tragedy as one could imagine. They combined their production choices with a superb cast led by the brilliant Dan Donohue as Hamlet, who with this performance affirms his place among the finest and most intelligent of all Shakespearean actors working today. The individual elements of the production, a robust three and a half hours even with several cuts, were so well done, and the resulting impact of the whole was so powerful, that the totality beggars description. Perhaps the most that any review essay can do is highlight some of the production's finest moments in the vain hope that one's remarks can replicate some of the excitement of watching such an engrossing production. (9)

Scenic designer Christopher Acebo set the play on a crystal green floor in a modern Danish castle. A wall of high, dark stones, facing the audience, extended fully across the back stage, which was the long side of the horizontal set. Three doors opened into the "interior" of the castle, a fourth opening stage left was frequently used as an exit, and far stage left a much larger door, overlaid with steel maze-like patterns suggesting the "prison" that Hamlet says Denmark has become, opened into the outside world. Through this steel door Fortinbras would crash into the Danish court. Set into the wall at right angles were two sliding stone panels of equal height that moved to accommodate different scenes. For most of the play the audience faced the long back wall, above which was a parapet where Hamlet Senior's ghost appeared and where Polonius, Claudius and Gertrude sat for "The Mousetrap." While most scenes were played using this arrangement, for some, including the closet and nunnery scenes, the two panels slid out from the facade perpendicular to the back wall to create small, claustrophobic rooms with doors through which spectators gazed. Thus in 3.1 we, as voyeurs, saw Hamlet struggling with Ophelia as in a private room, while in an adjacent room Claudius and Polonius listened to their frantic meeting via the listening devices that Ophelia wore strapped under her blouse. Peering down upon the stage from the parapet were two closed-circuit television cameras, marked by blinking red lights, that moved as the characters did. Thus, as in many modern cities, every movement of every character was watched by Claudius's police force who appeared when needed with radios and assault rifles. Even when in 3.1 Ophelia showed Hamlet one of the listening devices and he ripped it apart, Hamlet was, as Ophelia says, "Th' observed of all observers" (3.1.157). Rauch thus used a line from the play to enhance its contemporary setting. Coiled barbed wire atop a short wall stage left, while perhaps meant to increase security against invasion form the outside, also suggested Claudius's Denmark as the prison that Hamlet says it is in 2.2.

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Even before the play proper began, Rauch's and Acebo's creativity was pronounced. As spectators filed into the dimly lighted theater, they saw four rows of chairs facing a casket draped in red cloth and flanked by four burning candelabra. A solitary figure, hunched over, head down, wearing a black suit, white shirt, and black tie sat alone, occasionally dabbing his teary eyes. This was Hamlet, the last person to leave his father's funeral service. Rauch and Acebo integrated this prelude superbly into the fabric of the play. As the funeral attendants removed more chairs, one would come to Hamlet, obviously asking him to leave, and then continue removing chairs until finally only a few remained. As an attendant extinguished the last of the candles, Hamlet walked to the casket, touched it gently, and the theater suddenly darkened. Stage left appeared Bernardo and Francisco fully armed. The Ghost of King Hamlet, played by Howie Seago in combat fatigues and boots, strode majestically above the parapet as the soldiers pointed their guns at and faced the opposite wall, suggesting the omnipresence of this strange visitor to their world. As Seago is deaf and mute, Horatio's "Stay! Speak, speak! I charge thee, speak!" (1.1.56) was immediately ironic, and the Ghost's refusal to speak to others anticipated his speaking to Hamlet later with sign language, as if father and son shared a secret language. This staging of 1.1 emphasized the apparition's alien nature; here was a being that Claudius's cameras could neither detect nor deter.

Attendants applauded as Claudius (Jeffrey King) and Gertrude (Greta Oglesby) entered their dazzling court. All except Hamlet, who sulked stage left, shared in the cake and wine that Gertrude wheeled in. The King was stately, authoritative, and self-assured, while Richard Elmore as Polonius was obsequious. Hamlet moved to center stage only to tell Gertrude that be would obey her and then immediately turned toward spectators to speak his first soliloquy as the court members froze. One of Donohue's supreme gifts as an actor is his ability to modulate his voice and tone instantaneously within not just a sentence or a line but even a word. His varied tones throughout this soliloquy, combined with an amazingly muscular voice, created a Hamlet already in immense distress. Kneeling in front of Gertrude, in a spotlight, Donohue carried us deeply into Hamlet's anguish. While frozen action and spotlights are hardly new theatrical devices, the anguish and pain in Donohue's voice announced his Hamlet as a man already distraught and totally alienated from this court.

Susannah Flood as Ophelia entered in muddy boots, blue jeans, and a flannel shirt carrying flowers in a bucket and tending among rocks some violets--all of which would wither when her father died--and then picked up and placed beneath her bucket a letter from Hamlet that she found among the rocks. After Laertes's intense warning to Ophelia about Hamlet's affections, which sounded quite odd in a contemporary setting, she and Laertes, who carried a backpack and a guitar case for his journey to Paris, repeated aloud some of Polonius's stale instructions. This funny domestic scene turned ugly when Polonius asked Ophelia about Hamlet, and she and he argued angrily about her relationship with Hamlet. As Ophelia started to leave, she picked up the flower bucket but left lying on the stage Hamlet's letter, which Polonius immediately seized and read. Ophelia was furious at herself for leaving the letter behind, and her "I shall obey, my lord" (1.3.137) sent her on a journey into madness.

In Hamlet's scenes with the Ghost, numerous lines were cut to minimize the amount of signing that Donohue would have to do and to emphasize the crucial information that the Ghost must convey to Hamlet. Here, as in Merchant, what might seem to be an obstacle to dialogue became instead a means of exploring a character's tortured mind. Because Hamlet spoke what the Ghost signed to him, and signed as well as enunciated his own responses, Hamlet experienced the Ghost's fury and anguish through both spoken language and gesture. For hearing spectators the encounter became a spoken dialogue within Hamlet of the Ghost's and his own increasingly terrifying emotions. Seago did utter "O horrible! O, horrible, most horrible" (1.5.81) and after coming downstage from the parapet be stomped about the stage to indicate his fury at his brother and Gertrude. Hamlet was frantic after the Ghost's initial exit. In his short soliloquy "O all you hosts of heaven" (1.5.93-113) Donohue fractured the rhythms as he raced and then suddenly paused--"Remember thee?"; "Yes, by heaven!" (98, 105)--to mimica mind suddenly enraged. With Horatio and Marcellus he immediately "played" one gone mad, giggling as be urged them to swear. His sword was a knife on which all three cut their fingers, symbolizing a blood bond not to reveal what they have this night seen. In a final brilliant choice when I saw the play in July, as the ghost reappeared above Rauch reversed the usual editorial stage direction: "They wait for him to leave first." (10) Hamlet ushered off Marcellus and Horatio stage left, then returning to center stage signed to the Ghost: "Nay, come, let's go together" (1.5.199). In this version, Hamlet explicitly beckons his father's ghost to travel with him on his journey through the play. This moment was staged differently in the October performance, but in either case Rauch's staging created an entirely new meaning to this line and signaled the Ghost as Hamlet's constant companion throughout the play:

Rauch retained Reynaldo in 2.1 so that we saw another image of spying and here introduced a bizarre but again visually significant image. Polonius was not wearing pants when he walked onstage, and when Ophelia entered she was carrying a large pair of scissors; she was altering one of Polonius's suits. (Ophelia as Atropos?) The scissors went a progress through the play, and eventually became the weapon with which Hamlet stabbed Polonius. Like Polonius, Hamlet initially wore an inky, formal suit, yet as he danced through the play, usually in bare feet, and became more melancholy, clownish, and at times nearly if not actually mad, his suit was progressively more cut-up, the pant legs ripped and holes cut into the jacket, until eventually it became a suit of "shreds and patches" (3.4.106). This "suit," a matched set of clothes that implies order, became instead an image of complete disorder, a visual image not only of King Claudius that Hamlet hurls at Gertrude in 3.4 but also an image of his own emotionally ragged self. Hamlet used Ophelia's scissors to make himself into an image of Claudius's court; combined with the jester's three-pronged hat that Hamlet donned for "The Mousetrap," he became a motley fool in a criminal court.

Rosencrantz and Guildenstern were young women, daughters of Hamlet's childhood nanny and cook, whose presence as Hamlet's "excellent good friends" added some sexual intrigue to their return. (Several reviews insisted that they were played as a lesbian couple. Their holding hands at several points in the play suggested this relationship, but I don't see that as necessarily how they played their characters.) The players, in whom Hamlet took great delight, were rappers in their own leather motley, whose leader performed the Pyrrhus speech to rap rhythms. Like the use of security cameras, this choice, while utterly foreign to traditional staging of the play, blended well into the contemporary setting and not only energized Hamlet but also identified him as one of them: a clown prince playing a role in costumes and rhythms completely foreign to the dominant culture. In another surprising choice, Rauch had Rosencrantz and Guildenstern remain onstage while Hamlet spoke to the First Player about his dozen or sixteen lines, so that presumably during "The Mousetrap" Claudius might have known that Hamlet had asked to have some lines added to the night's entertainment.

In Hamlet's "Now I am alone" (2.2.549-606), Donohue was brilliant. He railed loudly at himself, gestured at spectators as if asking us to explain his inaction, and instantaneously lapsed into humor at several points, especially on "Why, what an ass am I?" (583). These shifts in tone and rhythm were so rapid, so seamless, that one recognized the genius of acting as an art that conceals art when an actor so completely embodies his character that he seems not to be "playing" at all. This element of Donohue's performance sparkled through the center of the play.

As the two panels moved outward from the back wall to carve the stage into three small rooms, in the far left room Polonius tied one small microphone around Ophelia's waist and another to her back. In the room was a single kneeler often present in side-chapels of Catholic churches. On top of the kneeler was a row of small lighted novena candles. The image of this sprightly young woman, who earlier had argued vigorously with Polonius, now baring her naked flesh to her father as he strapped listening devices on her body was quite disturbing. Ophelia was sufficiently distraught when describing Hamlet's appearance in her closet to indicate that she had been really unsettled by his bizarre behavior. But this plot requirement notwithstanding, Ophelia's being so thoroughly controlled by her father and made a tool of the king was difficult to fathom in this contemporary setting.

Rauch's staging of Hamlet's "To be, or not to be" soliloquy (3.1.57-91) was both thrilling and unconventional, and raised some fascinating questions about what spectators were to believe about who knew what as the play progressed. Hamlet emerged into the central of the three rooms to speak his lines, while in the stage left room Ophelia knelt as if praying and holding a packet of Hamlet's letters. Polonius says to Ophelia at 3.1.43 "Ophelia, walk you here," and Shakespeare's stage directions at 3.1.55 read simply "Exeunt" (i.e., Polonius and Claudius) and "Enter Hamlet." Thus if directors follow Shakespeare's script, Ophelia is somewhere onstage when Hamlet begins his monologue. As Donohue began speaking Ophelia rose from the kneeler and looked toward the middle room, as if hearing what Hamlet was saying. Presumably also Polonius and Claudius, now in the stage right room, also heard Hamlet's soliloquy because of the two microphones strapped to Opheia's body. Donohue sat downstage center barefoot and in shredded clothes, resembling more a pauper than a prince. Despite his ragged appearance, his monologue was nonethdess profound. He lingered over every phrase, articulating brilliantly the movements of Hamlet's mind through the many questions and possible answers that he contemplates. Each unit of thought was given equal weight, and Donohue's clear pronunciation and measured pace allowed spectators to follow easily the speech's complex ideas and intricate structure. Donohue initially spoke calmly but with palpable tension in his voice, evoking a Hamlet fascinated by the powers of his own mind yet recognizing that these very powers demanded that he think too precisely on the event. This recognition of the paradox of his own mind gradually created greater tension in his voice as Donohue moved through the soliloquy, and increased the sense that for Hamlet just being in this castle-prison, and having to think about that fact, was becoming unbearable.

That tension exploded when he encountered Ophelia. As if having decided to leave, Hamlet walked through the door into the stage left room where Ophelia had resumed kneeling. Hamlet saw Ophelia and bolted toward her. He grabbed the packet of letters that Ophelia offered and stuffed them in his pocket, as he will later tell Gertrude Claudius did with the diadem, while railing at her about her honesty and beauty. She dung to Hamlet, desperately trying to calm him, and after Hamlet pushed her away she pulled up her blouse to reveal the microphone. Hamlet immediately rushed through the door back into the middle room and stopped (knowingly?) on the other side of the wall from where Polonius and Claudius stood listening. Returning to her, knowing she had been used and that she had betrayed them, Hamlet suddenly kissed her hard and for a second they desperately embraced, as if seeking to flee together. He then pushed her to the floor, lay upon her in a sexual embrace, then stood up and raged at her to join a nunnery. Hamlet was unhinged, and the contrast between his profound meditation and this violent outburst was frightening. In that brief, desperate embrace and the violence that followed, Donohue and Flood superbly evoked two young people trapped in a prison from which neither could escape. In 5.1, when Hamlet leaped into Ophelia's grave and claimed that he loved her, one believed him.

Like a director instructing during a rehearsal, Hamlet critiqued his actors as he walked toward the stage from behind the spectators. This staging neatly transformed the Bowmer into the actual theater in Claudius's court where the actors were to perform. Rauch cut the dumb show--rappers don't do them--and The Murder of Gonzago became a rap opera accompanied by music spun on a turntable that appeared from below stage right. Claudius and Gertrude sat above on the parapet, and often during the performance Claudius leaned to his right, ostensibly to ask Polonius about the show. In his now thoroughly ragged clothing, Hamlet sat at Ophelia's feet and bawdily intoned "COUN-try" matters. All references to the Duke of Gonzago were cut, so the playlet moved quickly through shortened versions of the Player King's and Player Queen's lines toward Lucianus. Among his rapid-fire lyrics Lucianus included Hamlet's "Bloody, bawdy villain! / Remorseless, treacherous, lecherous, kindles villain!" from his soliloquy in 2.2 (580-81), suggesting that these lines were among those that Hamlet had asked the first player to include. Hamlet grabbed the microphone from the gyrating Lucianus after his "'Thoughts black" (253-58) speech to narrate the poisoning "i' the garden." Here Claudius suddenly fell to his right in obvious despair, and when he and Gertrude bolted Hamlet leaped all over the stage. He spoke his soliloquy about "drink[ing] hot blood" (3.2.389) downstage, directly to us, then crept up behind Claudius stage right as he knelt to pray. Unnerved and distraught, Claudius vomited into a toilet bowl in front of him. Hamlet held above Claudius's left ear not a knife but Ophelia's lethal scissors. Rauch's staging of this scene again challenged spectators sitting at an Elizabethan play transposed to their own time. Hamlet came right up behind Claudius and spoke standing over him, even making the line "That would be scanned" (75) a funny bit of self-reflection.

Hamlet attacked Gertrude furiously. More than any other Hamlet I have ever seen, he meant "And would it were not so--you are my mother" (3.4.17). He killed Polonius with Ophelia's scissors that he yanked from his back pocket, and then in an amazing crescendo of emotion Donohue convincingly played Hamlet's descent into manic rage. He climbed onto Gertrude's bed screaming his abusive correction at her so violently that she fell to the floor trying to evade him. As if he had been with Hamlet invisibly from the end of 1.5, King Hamlet's Ghost entered through one of the doors that led into the castle's interior. Hamlet's plunge into madness seemed irrevocable; he not only raved about his criminal uncle and his sinful mother but also suddenly began signing the words of a ghost. While here the use of a deaf actor in a crucial scene of an Elizabethan play, and the director's staging of it, created some difficulty in understanding exactly what Rauch, Donohue and Oglesby intended, nonetheless the actor' skills created an immensely powerful and frightening scene. (11)

Speaking calmly and deliberately, Donohue spoke directly to spectators Hamlet's "How all occasions do inform against me" (4.4.33-67), as if now finally resolved to action. Here and for the rest of the play he wore a red T-shirt, with the word VOLCOM (perhaps a telecommunication company) across it in large white letters. Conversely, Ophelia charged into Gertrude's bedroom wearing formal black for her father's funeral service, which she in her madness believed was to be held in Gertrude's room. She tumbled into Gertrude's bed, like the lass in her song, and at one point curled up on the bed in a fetal position, suggesting perhaps the child that she and Hamlet might have had. After Laertes's entrance with a gun that he pointed at Claudius's head, Ophelia reentered and the "flowers" that she distributed were her sunglasses and several small objects that she took from a black purse. As she finished distributing these objects to Gertrude and Claudius, and thinking perhaps of Hamlet as "bonny sweet Robin [who] is all my joy" (4.5.190), she stood on a chair and began undressing, finally exiting into the castle as she removed her blouse and bra. Perhaps she imagined that inside the castle her lover Hamlet-Robin longed for her. Further signifying the dissolution of Claudius's reign, Gertrude stayed onstage when Claudius urged "I pray you, go with me" (4.5.222).

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The bottom of Gertrude's skirt was wet as she entered 4.7.163, indicating her presence at Ophelia's death and perhaps an attempt to save her. As Gertrude narrated Ophelia's drowning, Ophelia, wrapped in a white shroud, emerged from the castle and stood stage right on a slowly descending platform. By Gertrude's "To muddy death" (184) Ophelia had disappeared, and this same open space became her grave in 5.1.

Donohue's loving caress of Yorick's skull implied intimacy and joy in King Hamlet's court. Laertes and Hamlet jumped into Ophelia's grave and wrestled so violently that Hamlet could justifiably say to Laertes in 5.2 that what he had done to him was madness. As Hamlet left the stage he dropped into Ophelia's grave the letters she had returned to him in 3.1; he had been carrying them with him ever since their parting. In the final court scene Hamlet wore only his red T-shirt, sneakers, and torn jeans amid Claudius's regal court. After Hamlet's second "hit" against Laertes, Gertrude approached Hamlet with a cloth to wipe his brow and in exchange took the poisoned chalice from him. As Oglesby explained in a talk-back, Gertrude, who had seen King Hamlet's ghost, drank knowingly from the poisoned cup to spare her son's life. Horatio lovingly spoke his eulogy over Hamlet's prone body, and after Fortinbras and his soldiers rudely pushed Horatio aside, King Hamlet's Ghost, still in his battle fatigues, reentered from inside the castle, as he had in 3.4, and cradled his son's body in his arms. They had indeed gone together on Hamlet's journey, and now King Hamlet grieved the lethal cost of his dread commands.

Notes

(1.) Amy Richard, Online Press Release. Accessed November 1, 2010. The 770 performances generated $18,473,563, and overall, achieved 94 percent capacity. Rauch's Hamlet played to 99 percent capacity, Twelfth Night to 98 percent, Merchant to 92 percent, and 1 Henry IV to 70 percent.

(2.) Darko Tresnjak, "Of Romance and Rudeness," Oregon Shakespeare Festival Prologue (Summer 2010), 10.

(3.) Ibid.

(4.) 1.3.69. All textual references are to The Complete Works of Shakespeare, ed. David Bevington (New York: Harper Collins, 1992).

(5.) Prologue, 4.

(6.) Prologue, 5.

(7.) Heald notes that he and Rauch decided to include Tubal, who tries to restrain Shylock, in 3.3 when Shylock insists on his bond, because they wanted to show that "... what Shylock is doing is seen as abhorrent, even by his fellow Jews, because demanding a pound of flesh is completely against Jewish morality" (Prologue, 5).

(8.) Bevington glosses respect as "comparison, context" (215).

(9.) I saw this production twice, first about mid-run on July 22 and then at the last performance on October 30. This second viewing allowed me to catch some elements of the staging that I had missed during the first viewing, and I also noticed that there were some changes between the two performances that I shall briefly note. Overall though, I was astonished to see such thrilling energy in the final performance--the 116th of the run.

(10.) Bevington, 1077.

(11.) King Hamlet never accuses Gertrude of complicity in his murder. Rather, he urges Hamlet to "Leave her to heaven / And to those thorns that in her bosom lodge, / To prick and sting her" (1.5.87-89). Those thorns are never explicitly identified; however, Hamlet's attack was so vicious, and Gertrude's grief so profound, that this production strongly implied her knowledge of, if not her involvement with, her husband's death.

Michael W. Shurgot, Seattle, Washington