thee-ay-ter

[rone]

Back during the first week of September, Kim, The Boy, and i went to the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, where we saw three Shakespeare plays and three non-Shakespeare plays, none of which i've ever read or seen before. Of the former, King Lear was sad, especially because the tragic events are propelled by an act of virtue (Cordelia's refusal to descend to a duplicitous, exaggerated show of love); the blinding of Gloucester was harrowing. Much Ado About Nothing was lavishly costumed but fell flat at key points due to a really terrible Claudio (who did a better job as Edmund in Lear). The Comedy of Errors was a short and shallow farce centered around mistaken identity that was set in a Rat Pack-era Las Vegas; i thought it worked great, but opinions in the group were mixed on that. It had a couple of fourth-wall-breaking moments which were very well timed.

The latter plays were Lorraine Hansberry's A Raisin In The Sun, a story of a `50s black family in South-side Chicago, trying to decide what to do with an unexpected windfall. It was a wonderful performance. The Royal Family was a sort of parody/pastiche of the Barrymore family of actors; it was funny, but not especially deep.

Finally, the best of the lot was Humble Boy, a play written only 3 years ago by Charlotte Jones. It is a play that involves astrophysics and the pursuit of the Grand Unified Theory, familial and carnal love, gardening and beekeeping. All of the characters are fully formed (except one, perhaps?), and their interactions are all deeply striking and vivid. I can't recommend this play highly enough.