Oregon Shakespeare Festival 2007.

Shurgot, Michael W.

For its 2007 season, the last for Artistic Director Libby Appel, the Oregon Shakespeare Festival produced two of Shakespeare's early plays, The Taming of the Shrew and Romeo and Juliet; one middle comedy, As You Like It; and Shakespeare's final play, The Tempest. Among other features, all four plays have at their heart romantic couples, although with varying fates. The two comedies were a curious mix. While many consider As You Like It a superior play and far less offensive than the oft maligned Shrew, this year's production of Shrew was far superior to As You Like It, primarily because the fiery relationship between Katharina and Petruchio was far more convincing than the tepid relationship between Rosalind and Orlando. Bill Rauch's Romeo and Juliet featured excellent acting throughout, especially Dan Donohue's Mercutio, and Appel's production of The Tempest was superb.

The lavish clothing clearly set this Shrew in the Italian Renaissance, but with a modern touch. The initial set was Baptista's Trattoria Di Padua, so identified by a sign hanging above the stage left entrance. As spectators settled into their seats on a cool evening with a threatening sky (more on that below), several servers, including Kate, hustled to bring coffee and pastries to their patrons. Bianca's favored position was evident immediately; attired in a luxurious gold gown that matched her exquisitely coiffed blonde hair, she sat among the guests while Kate, in a dull brown servant's dress and snarling constantly, served her and Hortensio and Gremio, who battled each other for the seat closest to Bianca. Baptista obviously approved this arrangement, thus establishing that Katharina had very good reasons to detest both her sister and her father. When Katharina entered in 2.1 dragging Bianca around by a rope, one sensed in Kate a violent envy that bordered on the pathological but also a woman desperate to escape her social situation. In Katharina's "What, will you not suffer me?" (1) one heard not only fierce anger but also genuine pain.

Given director Kate Buckley's firm grasp of the potential dynamics of the Katharina-Petruchio relationship, she surprisingly cut the Induction, thus robbing her production of Shakespeare's initial image of metamorphosis that is central to the play proper. This decision was especially surprising given Buckley's efforts to humanize the Katharina/Petruchio relationship--making it alternately boisterous and violent but also hilarious and tender--and the striking contrast that Buckley created between the Katharina/Petruchio relationship and that between Bianca and her suitors. Shad Willingham as Hortensio fell all over himself helping Bianca around the stage, and James Edmondson as a perfectly grumpy Gremio hobbled around with his cane wearing garments so many-layered and heavy that he could hardly stand straight. Sarah Butan's Bianca relished their attention, but obviously did not desire it; they were merely pawns in her game as she flaunted her sexual appeal before her drably-clothed sister, a Cinderella figure squirming in her servant's role. Buckley also stressed the central importance of clothing imagery in the play. Danforth Comins as Lucentio, in a paroxysm of sudden desire for Bianca, and Jeff Cummings as Tranio spent several funny moments trying to exchange their garments, emphasizing the obvious "supposes" of the Bianca plot and setting the stage for Petruchio's frantic assault on Padua's fashionable tastes.

Buckley cast Petruchio and Katharina as middle-aged, resembling how Beatrice and Benedick are often staged in Much Ado, which is considered a later version of Shrew. This decision created the potential for a mature and convincing courtship, assuming of course certain difficulties within both characters can be ignored. Michael Elich brings bountiful physical and mental energy to his roles. As Petruchio, richly attired and sporting flowing locks, he darted about the stage and spoke impatiently to Baptista when he doubted Petruchio's wish to marry Katharina. Here was a man on a mission: he came to wive it wealthily, and if wealthily, why then happily. Elich's obvious impatience and brisk diction presented a man whose business asketh haste and who comes not every day to woo. Jeffrey King as Baptista did caution Elich about the necessity of obtaining that special thing--Katharina's love, which he insists is "all in all," a line that suggests, amid this raucous farce, a sense of Katharina's emotional complexity--but Elich was perfectly serious when he asserted that obtaining Kate's love was "nothing." Grumio's urging Hortensio to "let him go while the humor lasts" (1.2.106-07) seemed a perfectly apt characterization of Petruchio as he pondered Hortensio's broken head and realized spontaneously that his ironic approach to wooing Katharina would completely surprise her.

The term "chemistry" is perhaps over-used in describing how actors interact on stage, but astonishing chemistry truly emerged between Elich's Petruchio and Vilma Silva's exuberant Katharina as they constantly reacted to each other's verbal and physical energy. Petruchio, obviously confident about his wooing plan replete with ironic blazons that Katharina has never heard before, stood stage right, smiling smugly. Katharina, who we must remember is sent in by her father ("Or shall I send my daughter Kate to you? / I pray you do" [2.1.167-68]), entered utterly furious. She bolted on stage, raced head down to the center, glanced up, and stopped cold. The look exchanged between them told spectators everything they needed to know immediately: neither had ever seen the likes of the other before. This was love--or something remotely resembling it--at first sight; and the game was on. Petruchio spent most of their initial scene chasing Katharina around stage, all the while infuriating her with his loudly punctuated expressions of "Kate." He relished his bawdy jokes about tongues and tails, and she smacked him hard at his insolence. His voice rose only when he threatened to cuff her if she struck again; he was obviously having too much fun to get really angry. Katharina was constantly exasperated by his wit, but, as with Beatrice who cannot resist speaking to Benedick even as she claims that nobody marks him, Katharina was obviously fascinated by Petruchio: "Where did you study all this goodly speech?" (2.1.259) was a genuine question. Katharina spat out "hanged" and tried desperately to free herself from Petruchio's grasp as he insisted that she had been the aggressive wooer. Yet as she darted off stage, she glanced back to indicate some interest in this tempestuous man who had at least acknowledged her beauty. When told about the wedding, Baptista, like Malvolio, looked to the skies to thank Jove!

Katharina entered for her wedding in a gorgeous white gown trimmed in gold and wearing a diamond-studded necklace--fine array far from her servant's smock at the cafe. Buckley staged Petruchio's entrance brilliantly; in marvelous motley and--in a clever reversal of the Sampson myth--shaved bald, he entered aloft as if symbolically above the ceremony. His outrageous clothing, described so breathlessly by Biondello, signaled his disdain for tradition and his determination to rescue Kate from her conventional household. Yet Katharina's justifiable anger clearly signaled another side of this controversial play. At least in this scene, Katharina did not see Petruchio's quest for mutual freedom but rather his trashing of a formal ceremony for which she has presumably longed. This surely is Katharina's wish as she urges all to attend the bridal dinner despite, or possibly because of, Petruchio's having hurled the sops at the sexton in the church. Katharina's rage, which prompted her to try to slug Petruchio again, only intensified his comical insistence that he and she were beset by thieves, an obviously lunatic claim as Baptista is surely anxious to be rid of them: "Nay, let them go--a couple of quiet ones!" (3.2.240). Amid this hurly-burly lie central questions about this play. Are we witnessing a couple gradually breaking free from societal conventions? A woman's spirit being broken by a madman who woos only while the humor lasts and marries only for money? Or both? Petruchio insists that Katharina is married to him, not unto his clothes, suggesting his disdain for convention; yet the rhetorical force of Elich's "My household stuff, my field, my barn, / My horse, my ox, my ass, my anything" (3.2.231-32), while so ridiculously repetitive as perhaps to belie its sinister claims, suggests a rough possessiveness that indicates that a woman may indeed be made a fool if she has not a spirit to resist. The tone of Elich's "They shall go forward, Kate, at thy command," down to "Fear not, sweet wench, they shall not touch thee, Kate! / I'll buckle thee against a million" (3.2.222-239), another absurd exaggeration (what million?), suggested that Petruchio was here engaging in yet another spontaneous game, like his assertion in 2.1 that Katharina had been the aggressive wooer. But Silva's insistent rage clearly suggested that Petruchio's attempt at using play to dissuade her from her characteristic behavior (2) was much less playful for her than for us.

In Act Four, where the tensions evident at the end of Act Three are magnified, Buckley's staging and direction indicated that she saw this couple as moving, however tentatively, towards a mutual resolution of these tensions. Petruchio entered from the stage left vomitorium, ahead of and indifferent to Katharina in her mud-splattered wedding gown. Petruchio's servants were anxious about his return home, but his exaggerated antics with them showed that he was deliberately fashioning for Kate a mirror of pointless rage. He enjoyed throwing food, boots, and furniture around the stage, and Katharina seemed genuinely terrified. Petruchio also spoke his soliloquy "Thus have I politically begun my reign" (4.1.176ff) from above, from whence he had pronounced his bizarre theory of wedding protocol. Buckley's staging was again provocative; having Petruchio pontificate from above suggested Petruchio's "authority" in matters of shrew-taming, while in 4.3 Katharina, hungry and tired, at one point begged food from spectators, indicating that she was really suffering. This moment was not funny. But Petruchio's asking her, ever so softly, to say "Thank you" for the food that he did eventually offer her was heartfelt, as if to show her, as one might a child, that "please" and "thank you" may be more powerful than anger. The scene with the beleaguered Haberdasher (see Novy's essay on this scene) reverted to comedy; Katharina stood stage left, observing carefully, as Petruchio railed about the gown and cap, and this staging suggested that here Katharina has finally begun to understand Petruchio's purposeful nonsense.

This realization was obvious on the road back to Padua. As Petruchio's tone at the wedding had signaled the "play" in his diatribe about wedding customs, so here Katharina's tone heralded her final grasp of the game being played. She sighed heavily at not realizing that the sun was the moon, and vice-versa, and flung herself on the "young budding virgin" with exaggerated rapture. Silva's deliciously drawn out, "Pardon, old father, my mistaking eyes, / That have been so bedazzled with the sun" (4.5.44-45), complete with a winsome snarl at this "son" Petruchio, was hysterical. Spectators laughed so long and hard that the actors had to freeze for several seconds before moving on. From now on the games would be mutually entertaining. Here one realized quite powerfully the truth of Petruchio's claim after paying the poor tailor: "'Tis the mind that makes the body rich" (4.3.168), a most un-farcical truth about human relationships that echoes his earlier "To me she's married not unto my clothes." The nobility's gorgeous clothing in the opening scenes became a perfect foil to Petruchio's insights into our tendency to judge people by their appearance. While some of Petruchio's antics in this play are genuinely disturbing, his insight into that chestnut about the discrepancy between appearance and reality is significant, and Buckley's staging superbly visualized that insight.

At 5.1.57-58, by which time a light rain was falling, Petruchio says to Katharina, "Prithee, Kate, let's stand aside and see the / end of this controversy." The controversy is the feud between the real and supposed Vincentio, the last bit in the duplicitous Bianca-Lucentio plot. Petruchio and Katharina here become a chorus to what they observe. At the end of this scene, in one of those magical moments that can happen only in live theater, Katharina asks Petruchio to "follow, to see the end of this ado" (5.1.134). Petruchio asks her to kiss him first, and Katharina objects: "What, in the midst of the street?"(5.1.135). Petruchio, pretending to ignore her modesty, playfully says he will go home again, and so Katharina agrees to his wish. This formerly warring couple stood close together, oblivious to the lightly falling rain, and kissed, creating a theatrical moment as tender as I have ever seen. (3) While the rain could not have been scripted, it added immensely to the serenity of those few seconds. As they parted, spectators sighed collectively, and then applauded.

Bianca's guests did attend her wedding feast, a long table that stretched across the stage laden with goodies that the (presumably) hungry actors devoured. Petruchio's last game, the outrageous bid that he makes about Katharina's obedience, was eagerly engaged by both. When Katharina actually came back on stage, Petruchio was flabbergasted; he smacked his forehead in a "Wow!" gesture and stood dumbfounded. Katharina glared at him as if to say "Now what?" While she "lectured" the froward wives, Petruchio, sensing her deliberate use of exaggeration as he had done earlier, began to chuckle. Katharina never got to her knees; on her "if he please" (much virtue in "if") Petruchio took her into his arms and kissed her fervently. She then pulled him off stage by the ear to the nearest bedroom.

As You Like It was far less engaging. Director J. R. Sullivan set the play in the hinterlands of 1930's America. Duke Fredrick, though wearing a wide red sash suggesting royalty, was a wealthy businessman, and the opening scenes occurred mostly in Oliver's warehouse, a drab building whose interior eerily recalled Beckett's set for Endgame: "Bare interior. Grey light. Left and right back, high up, two small windows." (4) The folk music in the Forest of Arden suggested Appalachian West Virginia, although Rosalind, Celia, and Touchstone had ordered their traveling clothes directly from LL Bean; Touchstone could have survived a Maine winter in his wooly getup. The play opened with a young boy playing a squeeze box and reciting lines from Shakespeare's sonnet 138: "When my love swears that she is made of truth / I do believe her, though I know she lies," an odd choice for the prologue to a festive comedy of love and forgiveness. Frederick's attendants resembled Mafia hoodlums in their heavy overcoats, cocked hats, and dark glasses; they bullied Orlando as well as Rosalind and Celia when they resisted Frederick's commands. Touchstone played the court fool in his check pants, frock coat, and black and white top hat, but his attempts at humor paled in comparison with Frederick's industrial strength tyranny. In 3.1 Oliver was interrogated and tied to a chair as Gloucester is in Lear. Frederick's "Well, push him out of doors" (3.1.15) as he kicked Oliver was gruesome.

The wrestling match was staged inside an actual ring in Oliver's warehouse, suggesting that Frederick and Charles, with Oliver's help, had used this method of intimidation before. The lissome Orlando, Danforth Comins, took quite a beating before defeating the much larger Todd Bjurstrom. Their combat spilled out of the ring, suggesting Charles's determined violence and Orlando's equal determination to survive. When Rosalind draped the chain over his neck, both were suddenly too embarrassed to speak, and Rosalind was quite sure that he had called them back before Celia ushered her off stage. It was a tender and funny moment that should have heralded an energetic courtship, but, alas, it was not to be.

Duke Senior and his cohort exuded resignation and acceptance, rather than remorse, and this tone emerged in their songs and music, including some non-Shakespearean "country tunes." Duke Senior, Jonathan Haugen, and his gentlemen exiles were not exactly roughing it; they toured the forest in wool sweaters and tweed jackets. Jaques, played by Robert Sicular, was a decidedly older gentleman in his Pendleton tweeds, carefully tucked scarf, leather gloves, touring cap and cane, leather-bound flask, and binoculars: a displaced New England gentleman determined to retain a touch of elegance. He was a genuinely somber older man, not a young courtier playing at melancholy because he thinks it fashionable. This casting choice lent considerable poignancy to his character, especially during and immediately after his Seven Ages speech. With Adam stage left and comforted by Orlando, the Duke's men stood in a semi-circle behind them. Jaques stood apart farther left, and spoke philosophically, not pompously, about the course of men's lives. By "sans everything," Jaques realized that Adam was a mirror of himself: an older man, not quite eighty, but certainly older than the Duke's other courtiers. Jaques, overcome by this living image of his aging self and weeping, exited stage left alone as his mates walked to the stage left vomitorium. "Et in Arcadia Ego," indeed! (5)

The relationship between Miriam A. Laube as Rosalind and Danforth Comins as Orlando, which should have delighted thoroughly given the actors' obvious energy, was theatrically disappointing. The simplest explanation is that there was little spark (dare I venture chemistry again?) between them. Comparisons are odorous, but exactly what fueled the Katharina-Petruchio story was missing between Rosalind and Orlando, and the reasons go beyond saying that the former play is more farcical and physical while the latter is more polished and intellectual. Rosalind claims to be deeply in love, but in her Oshkosh-by-Gosh Ganymede bib overalls, short boyish hair cut, and plaid flannel shirt, Laube was almost too impish, perhaps even too androgynous. She giggled and flirted through Acts Three and Four as if afraid to reveal any real emotions. Granted Rosalind is skeptical of Orlando's immaturity, given his carving her name in trees and comparing her constantly to mythical beauties, but she seemed to enjoy the games of tease too much while failing to convey the deep desire she claims to feel. The difficulty with this couple was perhaps a result of Laube's strengths as an actor. She exhibited terrific nervous energy throughout: bouncing around the stage, flirting coquettishly, giggling constantly, gesturing wildly, touching Orlando lightly then quickly withdrawing her hands, kicking up her heels in utter delight at her clever evasions. But Orlando never showed that he understood anything of Rosalind's instruction; he was so detached throughout their love games that he seemed oblivious to everything Rosalind was trying to teach him about what it might mean to love a real woman whose emotions he could neither predict nor control. Such was not the case with Oliver and Celia, or with--mercy!--Touchstone and Audrey. Each needed his own team of horses to maintain decency in the theater.

Rather than a deity (i.e., a separate character) supposedly descending to bless the happy couples, Hymen was one of the Duke's comrades who strolled into center stage as the couples gathered around him. This staging robbed the play of one of its essential features. If we are right that Shakespeare wrote As You Like It to inaugurate The Globe in 1599, then the suggestion of a deity at the play's end, blessing the work of the players, is essential. Since all the world's a stage, and all the men and women merely players, Shakespeare's theater becomes a place where, if we believe, we may receive blessings. Are not such blessings what we would like to receive?

Director Bill Rauch cut Shakespeare's chorus that opens Romeo and Juliet and opted instead for a visual statement. The opening tableau in the Elizabethan Theatre resembled a Broadway musical and brilliantly linked the play to both its Renaissance origins and to the present day. To the right of the upper stage stood a huge cross, an emblem of both the Christian faith and the death that this play will produce. Standing were the Duke, in regal Renaissance attire, and one his deputies in a modern suit and tie. Arrayed beneath them on opposite sides of the stage were the warring families: the elder generation, in sumptuous Italian garments, stood and faced each other; the younger generation, except for Romeo and Juliet, knelt in white shirts, blazers, ties, and plaid skirts (all identifying them as students in a prestigious prep school). County Paris stood out among these young people in his white silk suit, long slicked-back hair, and dark glasses, obviously older than, and distinctive from, the students. Center stage were two caskets, and standing behind them were Romeo and Juliet, hand in hand. Stage left and right and behind the families were two gates standing at 45 degree angles to the front of the stage. These gates were the doors of the Christian school, which the students attended (or skipped, much to the nuns' annoyance), and symbolized the larger prisons of family hatred and strict tradition that trap and finally destroy Romeo and Juliet. The school bell rang to hurry the students to class, and also to mourn the deaths at play's end. Mercutio's "A plague o' both your houses" (3.1.90) recalled Donne's "[N]ever send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee" (Meditation XVII), and also sounded death from the equally insidious plague of human hatred.

The opening tableau gave way to students rushing to school and passing an open market with wagons of fruit and bread. As the insults and hostilities increased, both boys and girls began hurling food at each other, until the stage resembled a food fight in a high school cafeteria. When the cops came, they threatened everyone with their clubs; apparently everyone in Verona was sick of these quarrels. As the feuding students entered the school gates, a scantily-clad young woman in short-shorts and halter top, listening to an I-Pod, jogged past the gates. John Tufts as Romeo gazed longingly at her. This brief scene heralded the twin forces that would drive the play: intense familial hatred and sexual passion. Amid the food scraps lay forces that neither Christian forgiveness nor human love could control.

The bond between Christine Albright as Juliet and Demetra Pittman as the Nurse was immediately apparent. The Nurse fussed lovingly with Juliet's hair as her mother questioned her about marriage, and the Nurse's delight in bawdy puns anticipated her meeting with Mercutio in 2.4, where both enjoyed the risque rapport. The sexual energy of this production was strikingly evident in 1.4; the masquers appeared in multi-colored tights, boots, and large masks reminiscent of Star Wars and boasting the most exaggerated codpieces I have ever seen on stage. The leader of this sexually charged pack was Dan Donohue's robust Mercutio. An amazingly talented actor who dominated the stage during his scenes, Donohue played Mercutio in a Darth Vader outfit, complete with Vader's sinister mask and black cape. Donohue's Queen Mab performance was electrifying. Once he started, Donohue never stopped to breathe, and he had an individual gesture for nearly every one of Mercutio's images. On "Her wagoner a small grey-coated gnat" (2.4.67) Donohue spontaneously caught between his fingers one of the bugs that fly around the stage during all performances! Donohue darted all over the Elizabethan stage, including the cover over the stage left vomitorium, from which he finished Mercutio's speech with his voice rising on every line. Romeo's "Peace, peace, Mercutio, peace!" was an unwelcome interruption of Donohue's tremendous theatrical skill. The sheer energy of Donohue's performance showed that Mercutio is desperately seeking Romeo's approval, if not love, and emphasized how tragic is his death when Romeo interferes in his fight with Tybalt. Also evident in Donohue's performance is the risk that Rauch took by casting his most talented actor as Mercutio. With a dominating Mercutio gone after 3.1, productions of this play can wilt if other actors do not have the skill to maintain the theatrical energy that Mercutio's role can evoke from a gifted actor.

The sudden love between Romeo and Juliet was delightfully staged. Capulet's party included the old folks pantomiming upstage to delightful Renaissance tunes, while the younger set gyrated downstage to raucous rock. Amid the swaying hips and thrusting codpieces, Romeo and Juliet suddenly found themselves alone down stage center. They froze momentarily; exchanged eyes, as Prospero says of Miranda and Ferdinand; kissed gently ("by the book") twice; and their fate was sealed. Juliet's balcony was the top of the platform from which the Duke had surveyed his warring subjects, a symbolic hint of the young lovers' ill-fated attraction. Juliet's "O Romeo, Romeo, wherefore art thou Romeo," a speech which suffers perhaps from too much familiarity, became for Albright a fresh and impassioned inquisition into accidents of birth such as one's family name. Romeo, embodying the real fear for his safety that the events of the party have created and that actors must not forget, darted feverishly back and forth between the base of the platform and the front edge of the stage, as if only among the spectators could he find safety from the guards about whom Juliet warns him. He climbed just barely high enough on the platform to touch her hand, a very tender moment, then dashed away as more voices from within parted them. Albright and Tufts thus invigorated this familiar scene and made their love totally believable.

Romeo banged loudly at the gate of Mark Murphey's Friar Laurence, his impatience to be married another image of the sexual energy of the play. In 2.4 Mercutio appeared as a soccer coach teaching his mates who entered in their school uniforms. Mercutio was visibly angry at Romeo's absence and at his indifference to the magic of his Queen Mab speech and hinted at a latent sexual desire for him. Perhaps also frustrated at Romeo's new love, Donohue was hilarious and bold in his sexual teasing of the Nurse, who thoroughly enjoyed his fondling and lifting of her skirt and his visual joke about "prick" with her umbrella. (Here was the sexiest couple of the play! A brilliant, mature Benedick and Beatrice?) Juliet's impatience in 2.5 matched Romeo's at Friar Laurence's cell; she rubbed the Nurse's shoulders nearly off her body to hear of Romeo's marriage plans. In 3.1 Mercutio welcomed violence, embracing it with the same vigor as he delivered his Queen Mab speech. During the protracted sword fights, Mercutio seemed everywhere at once, and his death scene was another of Donohue's stellar performances. After being stabbed, Mercutio was carried stage left, where he collapsed amid pools of blood. Donohue uttered Mercutio's final lines, beginning with "I am hurt. A plague o' both your houses" (3.1.89-90), while choking on blood and with a bitterly ironic laugh. Donohue gave to Mercutio's final moments a sudden realization of the absurdity of the hatred plaguing this play, and his death was immensely moving. Romeo used the knife that had killed Mercutio to slay Tybalt, and from thence that knife would travel to the play's final scene. As Romeo ran, police sealed off the crime scene with yellow tape, and reporters entered to record yet another stabbing in Verona.

Shakespeare structures the play so that Mercutio's psychic and sexual energy is assumed by Juliet in her speech opening 3.2, "Gallop apace, you fiery-footed steeds." While Donohue was clearly the most powerful actor of this production, Albright's Juliet was genuinely passionate, and the verbal energy of this speech, as she looked desperately into the audience from the upper stage hoping to find Romeo, only heightened her terror at the Nurse's news about Tybalt's death and Romeo's banishment. As with the balcony scene, here Juliet conveyed convincingly her conflicting emotions: "Shall I speak ill of him that is my husband?" (3.2.97). Rauch staged 3.2 and 3.3 simultaneously, with Juliet and the Nurse above and Romeo and Friar Laurence below. This staging emphasized how rapidly events conspire to mock the lovers' plans. Rauch then staged scenes 3, 4, and 5 in rapid succession, suggesting again how quickly events now occur. Above, Capulet, his wife, and Paris discussed Juliet's marriage, while from below the stage, on Capulet's "Go you to Juliet ere you go to bed; / Prepare her, wife, against this wedding day," (3.4.31-32), the lovers' bed rose to occupy the place of the caskets in the opening tableau. As they awaited the dawn, their cuddling beneath the wedding sheets was wonderfully tender.

Capulet raged at Juliet's refusal to marry County Paris, kicking pillows and bedding all over the stage, thus mutilating the place where the lovers had consummated their marriage. Lady Capulet stood by, stunned at his anger, and abandoned Juliet as she exited quickly on "I have done with thee" (3.5.205). Clearly her marriage and patriarchal order meant more to her than her daughter. At Friar Laurence's cell in 4.1 Juliet was resolute in her wish to die as she brandished a knife, and Mark Murphey as the Friar superbly conveyed his frantic plan to save her and her marriage. Richard Howard doubled as Capulet and the Apothecary, an intriguing choice that suggested that Juliet's father, in his inability to quell the hatred between the families, was indirectly responsible for Romeo's buying the fatal potion.

The darkness of the outdoor theater--by now nearly midnight--eerily evoked a real graveyard. Amid the darkness Juliet emerged from below on a brick slab surrounded by several large candles. The "tomb" was simply the stage itself. Because of the natural darkness, characters entered from and exited into unseen places, visible only when they came near the candles bordering the bier. Romeo was mad with grief, frantic to be alone again with his Juliet and lie with her, even in death. He killed Paris with the knife he had used to kill Tybalt, as that fatal weapon made its way towards the lovers' doom. Romeo's speech beginning "How oft when men are at the point of death / Have they been merry, which their keepers call / A lightening before death!" (5.3.88-90) was Tufts's finest moment. Romeo's imagery here anticipates Othello gazing upon Desdemona and exclaiming "My wife, my wife," only to realize that he has no wife. Here, Romeo also speaks of a wife he thinks dead and utters maddening contradictions: "O my love, my wife! / Death, that hath sucked the honey of thy breath, / Hath had no power yet upon thy beauty."; "Ah, dear Juliet, / Why art thou yet so fair? Shall I believe / That unsubstantial Death is amorous, / And that the lean abhorred monster keeps / Thee here in dark to be his paramour?" (5.3.91-93; 101-05). In this speech Tufts moved far beyond the emotionally immature teenager he had been earlier in the play. Dying upon a kiss, he lay again with his wife for several seconds in the hushed theater.

Friar Laurence crept furtively into the graveyard and when Juliet refused to leave with him he exited quickly into the darkness, an apt symbol for his ambiguous actions. His sulking away paralleled the Nurse's terrified exit from Juliet's side in 3.5 after she hopes she has convinced Juliet to marry County Paris. Juliet's final kiss, hardly by the book, left no doubt that she could not live without her Romeo. As she thrust Romeo's fatal dagger into her body, her blood stained their white garments, symbolically linking them in death. She fell into his outstretched arms and grasped his hand one last time. Church bells tolled yet another death as Capulet and Montague walked towards the dead lovers, their reconciliation much too late.

The highlight of the festival was Libby Appel's The Tempest. She teamed with scenic designer William Bloodgood to stage a brilliantly imaginative version on the Elizabethan Stage. Prospero's primitive island evoked Stonehenge. Nine huge pillars stood in a rough arc at the back of the stage and two smaller ones stood closer to center stage. Heavy ropes that the victims of the shipwreck would grab during the storm and that the deities would grasp in 4.1 hung from the upper stage. Center stage was a small stand on which lay Prospero's book; when he opened it, a thunderous storm began the play. As with Romeo and Juliet and The Taming of the Shrew, here the nobility wore sumptuous clothing to locate this play firmly in the late Italian Renaissance.

Appel's conceptions of Prospero, Caliban, and Ariel, and her casting of these three characters, created a fascinating and emotionally complex production. As Prospero, Derrick Lee Weeden, who is physically powerful and possesses an amazingly sonorous voice, was a dominating, forceful, and angry magician, yet at times a wonderfully tender and vulnerable father. Dressed alternately in rugged, torn clothing or his diaphanous, parti-colored magical gown and bearing his staff, he thundered around the stage as he ordered Caliban and Ariel about, and raged at his enemies' perfidy and cruelty or at Caliban's "foul conspiracy" against his life. Yet in his long opening narrative in 1.1, he was genuinely tender with Miranda, eager that she should know her history and what lies before her, including the dangerous humanity that is, as he warns her later, "new to thee." He nurtured Miranda's relationship with Ferdinand, and though harsh with him at times, Weeden's soft tones showed that he cared deeply for them, a loving father aware that he could do only so much to assure his daughter's happiness. Prospero's "fair encounter / Of two most rare affections" (3.1.75-76), lines spoken as he watches Miranda weep, produced a truly lovely moment.

Neither Caliban nor Ariel is "human" in the play, yet obviously each must be played by a human being, thus creating a fascinating challenge to spectators' ability to suspend their disbelief. Dan Donohue was so compelling as Caliban, at times so "human," that I sensed early on a danger that I would become sympathetic towards him at several moments. Donohue was covered in grotesque, scale-like, peeling skin and wore a skull cap covered in weeds or perhaps algae. He was also bound all over his body by heavy ropes in rectangular patterns suggesting prison bars, indicating his physical imprisonment by Prospero. Caliban's face was reddish and his eyes bloodshot, suggesting physical abuse or a strange, untended illness. Donohue's verbal agility, so evident in his terrific performance of Mercutio, irresistibly demanded attention whenever he spoke of his enslavement on the island that once was his. Donohue evoked considerable pity when he spoke of the beauties of the isle and of his mother, and hearing his voice resonate throughout the theater one was surely glad that he had learned Prospero's language, even though Caliban may claim to hate it. Donohue created a complex Caliban whose appearance was bestial enough to suggest an animal lust for Miranda yet sufficiently "human" to suffer mental as well as physical torture. He also compelled us, perhaps against our will, to sympathize with a creature struggling to understand how and by what force its world had been destroyed and ropes thrown around his body. (6)

Equally complex a "character" was Nancy Rodriguez's Ariel. Early in 5.1 Ariel must say to Prospero that were he to see the effects of his charms on old Gonzalo, Prospero's "affections" would "become tender." Prospero asks "Dost thou think so, spirit," and Ariel answers "Mine would, sir, were I human" (17-20). Rodriguez's Ariel certainly resembled a magic spirit, but she was also decidedly human. For most of the play she wore a tan halter top and light blue pants bearing cloud patterns, symbolizing her "airiness," while her bare midriff indicated the attractive young woman "playing" her role. Her spirit nature was indicated by a headdress adorned with long, multi-colored streamers that flew behind her as she implemented Prospero's orders. Face paintings in red and blue echoed the colors of her streamers, and suggested perhaps an ancient Egyptian deity. She was accompanied throughout the play by five "Shadows" in brown and blue cloud-patterned capes who aided her in her complex tasks and often appeared with her on the upper stage. As Rodriguez explained in a discussion after the play, Appel wanted the relationship between Prospero and Ariel to deepen throughout the play as if they were both human. Given the physical attractiveness of Weeden and Rodriguez, and their intense interaction in the play, this deepening relationship became increasingly evident and was clear by 5.1. In addition to Ariel's remark to Prospero about his and her "affections," after Ariel entered at line 217 with the Boatswain and Master, she stood next to Prospero whose "My tricksy spirit" (5.1.228) was warmly affectionate. Then, as Prospero spoke his aside to Ariel, "Bravely, my diligence. Thou shalt be free" (5.1.243), she kissed him as tenderly as one human could another on "free." Suddenly, they became parting lovers. Besides embodying the obvious physicality of these two sexually attractive actors on the stage, their kiss also suggested the power of Prospero's magic to instill affection in an airy spirit who, perhaps, longs--for this moment--to be "human."

Weeden, Donohue, and Rodriguez were supported by an excellent cast. John Tufts as Ferdinand and Nell Geisslinger as Miranda fell in love as joyously and spontaneously as any Romeo and Juliet and were thoroughly delightful: a new Adam and Eve creating the world anew on this barren isle. Appel created another intriguing sexual complication in the play by casting Greta Oglesby as the seductive Antonia, who caressed Tyrone Wilson's Sebastian as she urged him towards regicide. Evil in this play knew no gender boundaries, a fact that Miranda obviously had to learn. James Edmondson was properly oblivious to others as he rambled on about utopias and miraculously dry clothing, as Alonso Armando Duran's grief and bewilderment were among the most touching moments in the play. Christopher DuVal as Trinculo and Michael Hume as Stephano were hilarious drunks who used coconut shells for the wine that they spilled all over Caliban and the stage. DuVal has perfected a dead-pan delivery which he used hilariously in 2.2 in his drunken monologue about strange fish in England. Their rapid intoxication of Caliban was all the more sinister given Donohue's earlier, painful narration of his captivity. If in this production Caliban represented humanity's beastliness, a thing of darkness we must all acknowledge as our own, then Stephano's and Trinculo's obvious pleasure at his drunkenness implicated us all in their murderous plots. Whether clothed in Renaissance regalia or wine-splashed motley, human evil in this production stood out starkly against the primitive set, suggesting the ancient origins of our murderous nature. We are all such strange fish.

Prospero's journey towards his enemies was theatrically marvelous. The initial storm of fierce thunder and streaking lightning engulfed the entire theater as the ship's passengers swung desperately from the ropes above. Ariel, as befitting a spirit, worked magic from above. Attired in a cape, she sang to Ferdinand of sea changes as music drifted over the stage in 1.2 and directed her Shadows in Prospero's vision in 4.1. For 3.3 she became a harpy with huge black wings, condemning the traitors from the upper stage as she commanded her Shadows to carry in the banquet and then suddenly descend with it into the bowels of the stage. Prospero's vision in 4.1 was a brilliant combination of theatrical technology and the simple darkness of the night. The goddesses appeared standing above against a starry sky or hanging from the ropes so that they seemed to have descended from distant stars. This effect was heightened by the darkness and by the spotlights on Miranda and Ferdinand sitting below, as if, on this primitive island, magical light had emanated from the sky, rather than from computer-regulated spotlights. The theatrical magic of this scene explained why Miranda says she has never before seen her father so angry. Weeden alternated between obvious joy in his powers as he stood stage right watching his magic and angry despair at the continuing conspiracy of Caliban and company, as if not even the highest reaches of his art could quell such evil. Prospero's following "You do look, my son, in a moved sort" (4.1.146), often taken to be Shakespeare's farewell to his own theatrical magic, was both a lecture in human mortality and a passionate meditation. On "We are such stuff / as dreams are made on, and our little life / Is rounded with a sleep" (4.1.156-58) Weeden turned from his charges to address us all, his island become our theater where we are all merely players. Like Jaques in this season's As You Like It, Prospero knew too well how little is our life.

After getting completely sloshed and thoroughly entangled in the ragged motley provided by Ariel, Stephano and his court disappeared through the trap door into hell. Prospero's final encounter with the royal court was more direct. Wearing now a gorgeous golden cape, Prospero gathered them all into a circle where they were bound by ropes, perhaps suggesting the cords binding Caliban to his own peculiar evil. After Ariel's tender, "Mine would, sir, were I human" (5.1.20), Prospero relented to his "nobler reason" (5.1.26), and his farewell to his "most potent art" (5.1.51) was extremely moving. He reveled in the catalog of his art, yet ironically the more he recalled it the greater the difficulty of relinquishing it, a paradox that Weeden's powerful and carefully modulated voice conveyed brilliantly. Again as Milan, Weeden loosened the ropes, embraced Gonzalo, offered his hand to Sebastian, and finally forgave Antonia. Antonia glared at him, and then moved stage right, where she remained, aloof and unrepentant. Having drowned his book and broken his staff, Prospero could do no more; hence his warning to Miranda about the "brave new world" she is about to enter. Prospero's final moment with Caliban was far different; with his shackles now off, Caliban moved towards Prospero's cell to tidy up for the visitors, and Prospero touched his scalp lightly as he passed. Caliban's pledge to be wise hereafter and seek for grace suggested change, perhaps redemption for this thing of darkness, as if humanity really could be cured of its baser nature. Significantly perhaps, Caliban exited stage left, directly opposite Antonia standing defiantly stage right.

Having kissed Ariel goodbye moments before and abandoned his magic, Prospero, suddenly alone, turned towards us to speak the epilogue. Weeden's eloquence convinced us that his art, and Shakespeare's, was and is a form of love, and as such deserves prayer and mercy. As he had shown us in his theater the beauty of that rarer action, we gratefully set him, like his beloved Ariel, free.

Michael W. Shurgot, Seattle, Washington

Notes

(1.) 2.1.31. All textual references are to The Complete Works of Shakespeare, ed. David Bevington, 4th ed. (New York: Harper Collins, 1992).

(2.) On the play element in the Petruchio-Katharina relationship, see Marianne Novy, "Patriarchy and Play in The Taming of the Shrew," Love's Argument: Gender Relations in Shakespeare. (Chapel Hill and London: University of North Carolina Press, 1984), 45-62.

(3.) Readers familiar with the recent (1999) Penguin paperback edition of Graham Greene's novel The End of the Affairwill recall from the cover the image from the film of the lovers kissing in the rain. This image came immediately to mind as Petruchio and Katharina kissed.

(4.) Samuel Beckett, Endgame (New York: Grove Press, 1958), 1.

(5.) On the theme of mortality in As You Like It, with special reference to Nicolas Poussin's paintings of the Et in Arcadia Ego theme, see Anne Barton, "'As You Like It' and 'Twelfth Night': Shakespeare's Sense of an Ending," Shakespearian Comedy Stratford-Upon-Avon-Studies 14. Eds. Malcolm Bradbury and David Palmer (London: Edward Arnold, 1972), 160-80.

(6.) Ms. Joan Spence, one of the students in my 2007 Ashland course, was moved by Donohue's emotionally complex Caliban to ask several questions about the character in her written response to the production. What is it like to struggle to be human? What does it mean to be human? What happens to a people when their way of life is destroyed and they don't have the skills/background/innate ability to cope with, or are not welcome to be assimilated into, the colonizer's culture? How much of the ability to long for and strive for something better is contained within the acquisition of language and the gift of images? Ms. Spence was obviously affected by the strength of Donohue's performance, and saw Caliban as the victim of a colonizing invasion regardless of Donohue's white skin. She thus raises a central point about the actor playing Caliban, who does not have to belong to a recognizable racial minority to portray Caliban as the victim of brutal invaders. The potency of Donohue's acting clearly created a Caliban who could represent humanity's baser nature ("This thing of darkness"), while simultaneously portraying the plight of subject peoples anywhere in the world, whether in the sixteenth or the twenty-first century.