Oregon Shakespeare Festival (review)

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Reviewed by:

• Oregon Shakespeare Festival
• Lindsey Mantoan

OREGON SHAKESPEARE FESTIVAL. Ashland, OR. September 21-23, 2023.

In the wake of tremendous upheaval at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival (OSF), from leadership turnover to the COVID-19 pandemic to wildfires to audiences balking at a reduction in plays by Shakespeare in favor of new works by diverse playwrights, OSF produced a “Season of Love” in 2023. This season featured five live productions, down from eleven in previous years: Romeo and Juliet, Twelfth Night, Rent, The Three Musketeers, and the one-person tour-de-force Where We Belong. Showcasing beloved titles aimed at bringing back audiences still reluctant to go to live theatre, the “Season of Love” generally avoided the hard-hitting contemporary socio-political issues recent productions have explored (institutional racism, gender identity, queer love) and focused instead on widely appealing themes of romance, connection, and family (both found and biological).

Despite the move toward programming with broad appeal, no doubt intended to boost the organization’s financial outlook, OSF emailed patrons in April 2023, on the eve of opening, with a plea entitled “Save Our Season,” informing the theatregoing community that the entire 2023 season might be shut down due to lack of funds: “Right now, OSF is in crisis. . . . We see the path forward to sustained success, but we need your help to get there. We have set an ambitious goal of raising $2.5 million dollars over the next four months in order to save our season and to help us continue producing the world-class theatre that keeps you coming back home to OSF year after year.” Two months later, the organization had met that goal and issued another, more ambitious one: $7.3 million to complete the season. Robust community support for the festival, paired with a crowd-pleasing season, generated a better financial outlook for the festival than it has enjoyed in recent years.

But financial woes are only one of the challenges the organization faced this season. After a series of separations and furloughs in January, Artistic Director Nataki Garrett stepped into the position of interim executive director, a role she juggled with her artistic director duties and her work as director of Romeo and Juliet. Yet, on the eve of the production’s opening night, it was announced that Garrett was stepping down as artistic director, ending a tumultuous three years at the helm of the 88-year-old festival. In July, Tim Bond was announced as Garrett’s successor. He is a familiar face at OSF, having directed How I Learned What I Learned in 2022 and serving as the festival’s associate artistic director for eleven seasons, from 1996 through 2007. A savvy choice by the board, Bond brings experience as an artistic director of two other organizations and is a favorite of OSF audiences.

Amid all this offstage drama, OSF produced outstanding theatre. In the Angus Bowmer Theatre, Garrett’s inspired Romeo and Juliet, set against the backdrop of West Coast economic disparity, centered the consequences of scarcity on community formation. As the two houses, both alike in dignity, broke into new mutiny, Friar Lawrence moved in and out of the homeless encampment that provided the setting for the piece, traveling in a camper that delivered faith, hope, food, and COVID masks. The clever scenic design featured projections of a bridge with traffic coming and going, while a tent city and RV shell failed to shelter the characters from the elements and their own bad impulses. A love letter to Oakland, Garrett’s production leaned into the youthful impetuousness of these most famous adolescent lovers, with the balcony scene drawing uproarious laughs from the audience. Vocal outbursts and impromptu dance moves signaled the emotional immaturity of the teenage characters, whose conflict with each other seemed less rooted in ancient grudge than in juvenile ego.

Taking place “sometime between the great recession and now,” the production employed contemporary hip-hop beats and screen-based technology: Friar Lawrence’s text to Romeo about Juliet having been (temporarily) poisoned failed to send, a cellular service black hole in the homeless encampment marking yet another degree of the isolation that unhoused populations face. Characters deliberately...