Liberté, Égalité, Sororité

French history is chillingly familiar in OCT’s The Revolutionists

Paris, September 1793: The Bastille has fallen, feudalism’s dead and the Rights of Man have been declared. (That all sounds pretty good, right?) But wait, there’s more: Enter brilliant playwright Lauren Gunderson, who illuminates a murky, muddling moment in history with her bold new play, directed with strength and humor for Oregon Contemporary Theatre by Elizabeth Helman.  Continue reading 

Fun Reigns

ACE’s production of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert isn’t a theatrical, it’s a spectacular

It makes me all fizzy and giddy to see men dress up like women. There’s something so joyously liberating about it all. And I don’t think I’m the only one who finds female impersonators a total hoot and super sexy. Gay, straight, bi, femme, butch, blah blah blah: Just about everyone I know gets chirpy at the sight of an aging queen squeezed into a sleek satin dress and bellowing “I Will Survive” like a diva in heat. Continue reading 

Live Long and Prosper

Celebrating 50 Years of Star Trek with Eugene’s Trek Theatre

Half a century ago this world, as well as worlds beyond our solar system, fell in love with the ’60s television series-turned-movie franchise known as Star Trek. Christina Allaback, creative director of Eugene’s Trek Theatre, says that along with the relationships among central characters like Kirk, Spock and McCoy, the show’s underlying message of hope helps Star Trek endure. “There are dystopic science fiction stories,” Allaback explains. “With Star Trek you have the opposite of that — the possibilities of where the human race can go.” Continue reading 

Works in Progress

Oregon Performance Lab returns with teens, motorcycles and beer

Beer playwright Nick Leavens with actress Laura Ramadei

Oregon Performance Lab is back for its second summer of theater workshops, bringing rising playwrights of America to Eugene. Described as a “three-week pop-up laboratory,” OPL connects artists with venues, actors and an audience for theatrical experimentation. The wife-and-husband team of Willow Norton (artistic director) and Corey Pearlstein (creative director) are based in New York but have roots in Eugene. On the heels of last year’s successful inaugural season, now they are fueling even more ambitious plans. Continue reading 

Bard on the Butte

Magic things happen when a Texan hikes Skinner’s Butte

Richard Leebrick and Penta Swanson in A Midsummer Night’s Dream

It’s such a good idea. Why didn’t someone think of it sooner? “I was out one day moseying around on Skinner’s Butte,” Robert Newcomer says. “I thought, ‘Wow, this is fairyland up here.’”  Newcomer, a native Texan and theater arts educator who relocated to Eugene four years ago, is directing Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream in the inaugural production of Bard on the Butte.  Continue reading 

All Hail the Melancholy Dane

Timothy McIntosh takes the lead in Cottage Theatre’s excellent production of Hamlet

Tracy Nygard and Timothy Mcintosh Hamlet

As an accidental theater critic for the past 15 years or so, first in Seattle and now in Eugene, I’ve had the great good fortune to see Shakespeare performed in a variety of ways and in a variety of settings, professional and otherwise. Often upon the stage it’s just a poor player strutting and fretting, signifying very little, yet other times the work is divine beyond all reason. Continue reading 

Long Day’s Journey at the Beach

OCT premieres Shrimp & Gritts: She’s Gone, a new work from Eugene playwright Paul Calandrino

Bary Shaw and Rebecca Nachison in Shrimp & Gritts: She’s Gone

Living in Oregon’s Willamette Valley means that Manifest Destiny, also known as the Pacific Ocean, is never more than an hour away. From this distance, or even up close, it’s easy to romanticize such a beautiful place. Gazing upon the Pacific, anything feels possible. Visit the Oregon Coast, however, and sometimes you find sandblasted people and communities, stooped low against literal and metaphorical headwinds — economically and emotionally depressed.  Continue reading 

Freedom Versus Bondage

VLT presents the not-so-oddball You Can’t Take It with You

Central to the comic tension of You Can’t Take It With You is a fairly routine dichotomy that, perhaps by its very nature, remains forever unresolved, and which best might be summed up thus: freedom versus bondage. Of course, freedom and bondage have been at war since before Socrates whispered in Plato’s ear and Jesus put a shellacking on the Pharisees, but in this country we like to imagine capitalism invented the eternal conflict between vile materialism and spiritual liberation — in other words, Wall Street versus Main Street. Continue reading 

Breaking Vows Beneath the Stars

Free Shakespeare in the Park brings Love’s Labour’s Lost to Amazon Park

Lydia reynolds (left), Stephanie McCall and Isabella Lay in Love’s Labour’s Lost.

The passion of a young scholar knows no bounds. In the pursuit of knowledge, the King of Navarre and his best friends swear a sacred vow to renounce sleep, wine and even women for three years as they engage solely in educating themselves.  Then the witty Princess of France and her ladies in waiting arrive at the court of Navarre to negotiate a land dispute. Mayhem ensues. Continue reading