Shakespeare and a half

Or, five productions in three days at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival.

Much Ado About Nothing
This was OSF at its best, equal to the fine Much Ados they've done in the past. From the beginning of the parlay between Benedick (John Tufts) and Beatrice (Amy Kim Waschke), it was clear this was going to be a gem of a show, a bright comedy full of wit and action. Beatrice most amusingly crawled around in the audience while spying on the conversation about Benedick's love for her between Hero (Ava Mingo) and Ursula there was no Ursula, she was folded in with Antonio and dubbed Antonia (Sheila Tousey).
It had been announced to be a musical production, but the music was not overdone: four or five interpolated songs, starting with a monologue from Don John expounding on his evilness, with a number of lines from other Shakespeare plays woven into the lyrics. The closing song includes a verse for Hero in which she wonders, after all that's gone down, whether she really wants to marry Claudio after all. But it's done without the sourness of productions of Measure for Measure in which Isabella walks out on the Duke. In this production, this is a happy play.

Macbeth
For my tastes, Macbeth is above all else an eerie play, drenched in the supernatural and the paradoxes of prophecy. And this dark and brooding production played that up to the hilt. The three witches (Kate Hurster, Amy Lizardo, and Jennie Greenberry), dressed in rags and full-face masks (which they only removed for curtain call), dominated the play, lurking in the background more and more as it went on and even taking on some of the messenger/functionary parts in the later scenes. Atmosphere it had, and Lady Macbeth (Erica Sullivan), pale and thin, carried on in that spirit.
Unfortunately, Mackers himself (Kevin Kenerly) and Macduff (Jaysen Wright) were nearly inert. You don't want to hear "O horror, horror, horror!" or "Lay on, Macduff" spoken with all the emotional vacancy of Keanu Reeves (whom Wright rather resembles), but that, alas, is what you get.

Virgins to Villains: My Journey with Shakespeare's Women
A one-woman show in which OSF veteran Robin Goodrin Nordli recounts, quite entertainingly, her history as a Shakespearean actor starting as a high-school Bianca, and finishing by describing her favorite character, Queen Margaret of the Henry VI-Richard III tetralogy. Included are plenty of excerpts demonstrating how she acted particular performances, including the early encounter with Ophelia in which she understood "mad" to mean "angry."
I saw Nordli give a version of this several years ago. But it's been rewritten, updated, and trimmed to focus more on her own journey, and supplemented with props (when she brings up a play, there's usually a paperback copy for her to grab and wave around) and projected photos of herself in the roles. When she says that her other artistic accomplishment in high school was to play the piccolo in band, by gum she plays a quick run on a piccolo. I enjoyed this more than the earlier version.

Born with Teeth by Liz Duffy Adams
This also I had seen before, in a production at Berkeley's Aurora Theatre last year. I enjoyed that one very much, so I'm sad to report that this production was nowhere near as good. I think it was rewritten in the interval, or at least trimmed; there are some things I remember from the earlier performance that weren't in this one.
This is a two-actor play that's supposed to be about Shakespeare and Marlowe collaborating on the Henry VI plays over a three-year period. But this production cut back on the playwriting and is mostly about Marlowe's other career as a spy and on the two characters' sexual attraction for each other. It alters the balance and makes the story much more tedious.
Further, it was poorly cast. Marlowe opens by being brash and domineering and Shakespeare only gradually begins to hold his end up. But that evolution was undercut by the robust Alex Purcell as Marlowe being much bigger and louder than the smaller and slighter Bradley James Tejeda as Shakespeare. The balance between them never changes, and the ending - which I daren't give away - undercuts the presentation instead of culminating the evolution.

Jane Eyre adapted by Elizabeth Williamson
When shall we three meet again? All three of the witches from Macbeth had major roles in this play, which we saw the same evening as Macbeth in the afternoon. Jennie Greenberry was the feisty Jane, and Kate Hurster a hilariously frosty Grace Poole. The rest of the acting was also all around excellent, and the staging (Efren Delgadillo, scenic designer) brilliantly merged the Elizabethan Theatre's Tudor design with Thornfield's Gothic.
Also, it was an excellent adaptation, boiling down a long and complex novel (summation: Mr. Rochester really isn't a very satisfactory person, is he?) into a dynamic 155 minutes, despite a large amount of narration delivered by Jane. It ran rings around a rather discursive Great Expectations that OSF did several years back, not to mention an incoherent Wuthering Heights from Berkeley Rep. Or are the books responsible, in which case is Charlotte really that much better an author than Emily is?
Jane Eyre being thus an admirably written and performed play, what was with the costuming, or lack of it? Most of the women wore the kind of trousers you ride horses in. Couldn't OSF afford some dresses? And what was with the bizarre and out of character dancing they do at the end?