March 3, 2005

OSF Opening: In Review

'Babylon' debut stirs gift of love

By Roberta Kent
Tidings Reviewer

"By the Waters of Babylon," this season's opening production in OSF's New Theatre is a beautiful and rewarding collaboration between playwright Robert Schenkkan, director Bill Rauch and actors Catherine E. Coulson and Armando Duran. The title comes from Psalm 137, "By the waters of Babylon, there we sat down and wept when we remembered Zion." It is a psalm - and a play - about exile, loneliness and hope.

OSF presented the West Coast premiere of Schenkkan's play, "Handler" in 2002. Just as "Handler," was about love, death and redemption, Schenkkan has limned similar themes on a more intimate canvas in "By the Waters of Babylon."

As the play opens, Catherine (Coulson) is showing Arturo (Armand Duran) the garden she's hired him to reclaim. She chatters on, a bit diffident but loquacious thanks to the booze hidden in her Coke can.

Arturo is equally diffident, gruff and wary. We get enough information from their initial exchange to realize that these two middle-aged people are well educated, perfectly mannered and deeply wounded. Arturo is Cuban, an exile in a hostile, unwelcoming land. (It strikes me as a bit odd that he would end up in Austin, Texas.) Catherine reveals that she's been "shunned" by her neighbors. "Shunned" - a strange, ancient biblical word.

By late afternoon, the garden has been tamed and Catherine has asked Arturo to show her how to make a "mojito," a Cuban drink, beloved by Papa Hemingway, concocted from mint, sugar, lime juice, ice and soda. (The recipe is deliciously deadly enough that I warrant a good segment of the audience will go out and try one.) As the mojitos go down, Arturo and Catherine become comfortable enough to reveal the demons beneath the surface.

Arturo was a writer in Cuba. He deeply loves his "patria," despises Castro and what Cuba has become. Catherine is a witty, literate woman who has always felt an outcast. When she was assiduously courted by her graduate school professor, the romance was irresistible. But the marriage proved to be a verbal and physical hell from which death seemed the only escape. Slowly, as their pain is revealed, Arturo and Catherine find common threads and become friends.

"By the Waters of Babylon" was commissioned by the festival. Schenkkan had just unexpectedly fallen in love motivating an idea for a love story between two mature adults from widely different backgrounds. Schenkkan took this vague schematic to Lue Morgan Douthit, OSF's Director of Literary Development and Dramaturgy, and a received a commission to write the play. Rauch was hired as the director. Schenkkan involved Rauch, Coulson and Duran throughout the writing process. According to Schenkkan and Rauch, it was a deeply satisfying collaboration.

Schenkkan's writing here has a musical structure. He has given each character alternating soliloquies and then brings them together for duets. The playwright steeped himself in Cuban cultural and political history. Arturo's description of the genesis of Cuban music - the Cuban soul - is glorious. The recounting of Arturo's "accidental" escape from the island is harrowing and tragic but no less lyrical.

In contrast, Catherine's second act soliloquy spins and weaves with hypnotic horror. By the time we reach Schenkkan's passionate finale, we are in love with these two awkward, lonely people and soar with them as they find redemption.

Coulson and Duran are, indeed, truly well matched. These are not your standard "beautiful people." They have lived, loved and, perhaps, lost. Their characters are totally believable, totally engrossing and as fantastical as Schenkkan's ending is, it works well in the context of what we've learned about the characters as the action unfolds.

OSF veteran guest scenic designer Michael Ganio designed the lush sets, opening with the brackish, strangled, weed-filled garden that is an apt metaphor for Arturo and Catherine and then morphing into an equally lush bedroom. James F. Ingalls provided the effective lighting effects. Denise Damico's costumes subtly evoke not only Texas and the South but also the emblematic colors of Arturo's Orishas - those all-too-human-like gods and goddesses of Cuba's religion of Santeria that is as much a part of Arturo's identity as his beloved salsa music. Sound design is by Jeremy J. Lee.

Sometimes, if we're lucky, love finds us when we least expect it and lifts us to places we never expected to see. Schenkkan's play and OSF's production does both. "By the Waters of Babylon" plays in the New Theatre through June 24.

Richard III is the villain you love to hate

By Roberta Kent
Tidings Reviewer

Shakespeare wrote some really great villains. But his Richard III really enjoys being a villain. Starting with his ironic opening soliloquy, where he lays out exactly what he plans to do and how he's going to do it, Richard positively relishes creating havoc on his way to his brother's throne, using every weapon including outrageous flattery, insidious character assassination and the trappings of ostentatious piety.

"Richard III," the 2005 OSF season opener, is a fitting and triumphant conclusion to Shakespeare's history cycle recounting of England's Wars of the Roses. It ends with the first of the Tudors, Henry VII, Earl of Richmond, deposing Richard III and marrying Edward IV's daughter, finally uniting the Yorks and the Lancasters.

In this production, director Libby Appel definitely relishes what she describes as Richard's "unparalleled mixture of glee and menace" and she has found the right actor to portray him in James Newcomb.

Richard III can be played darkly and humorlessly evil. I remember seeing Al Pacino do Richard on Broadway in the mid-70s. Poor Al was not enjoying himself. He just wanted that damn throne. Laurence Olivier's performance, captured on film, has the humor but his Richard is sly. Newcomb, who has been with OSF for eleven seasons, is an incandescent Richard. If he isn't beloved, by St. George, he's going to have fun getting his revenge.

But Shakespeare's "Richard III" also has many levels, many subtexts. The brutality of the politics is very real. So, too, is the heart-wrenching pain of the royal women who see their husbands and sons sacrificed to the gods of war and treachery. Appel uses all of these themes - these major and minor key melodies, so to speak - and weaves them together into a satisfying symphonic whole.

Some of Appel's ploys are subtle - the use of color and the cut of the costumes, for instance. There is also Rachel Hauck's austere and elegant set, the clever use of Todd Barton's score and Robert Peterson's evocative lighting. Some of Appel's touches are blatant - Richard's deep red coronation robe cascading like blood behind him as he descends a stairway. Appel has the graceful and athletic Newcomb play the misshapen and crippled Richard as deceptively handicapped, just as Richard's unctuous demeanor belies his duplicitous character. Shriveled, twisted, dependent on crutches, Newcomb's Richard positively flies across the stage and over obstacles, using his posture as a ruse, those crutches as pivots and vaulting poles to dominate the stage, the other characters and the action.

One of Appel's most successful inventions is to have the play's women - the hapless queens - proceed onto the stage as a Greek chorus in a prologue. Appel has taken a late scene in the play, where Queen Margaret, the widow of Henry VI (Robin Goodrin Nordli), Queen Elizabeth, the widow of Edward IV and mother to the two slain princes in the tower (Suzanne Irving), the Duchess of York, mother to Edward IV, Clarence and Richard (Linda Alper), bewail the killings in a what becomes a ritual chant. From the very beginning, that chant is a counterpoint to Richard's gleeful shenanigans, emphasizing that Richard's actions have dire consequences.

The portrayal of the political jockeying is also well-crafted. Michael Elich's Duke of Buckingham is a wonderfully companionable evil accomplice to Richard, an effective balance to the naïve Hastings (Jonathan Haugen) and the forthright, loyal Stanley (Brad Whitmore). Appel uses the OSF repertory effectively with the rest of the casting: Richard Elmore's placating King Edward, Robert Vincent Frank's repentant Clarence, Laura Morache's wretched Lady Anne and Danforth Comins' heroic Richmond, to name a few.

Appel has also taken the figure of the deposed dowager, Nordli's Queen Margaret, and transformed her into a mesmerizing bedraggled, ragged prophetess, haunting the court with what had been and what will come again.

Not every detail of this production is perfection. While Robin Goodrin Nordli's Queen Margaret is a hypnotic figure, you wonder how she can hang around the court and not be better dressed. Equally disconcerting are what appear to be gardener's kneepads on the uniforms of Richmond's conquering army or the quick gesture of a zipper on Richmond's vaguely 15th century battle dress, or the defiant modernity of Richard's crutches. But these are quibbles.

Henry VII, by the way, was actually a lot like the Richard III of this play and Richard III was much maligned by his successors. But then, as we all know, the victors get to write their version of history. Shakespeare probably thoroughly enjoyed writing his crafty, unabashed villain. And I would bet that Libby Appel and her OSF team had equally as much fun artfully bringing Richard to life this time around.

"Richard III" plays in the Bowmer Theatre through October 30.

Old wine should be as sparkling 'Philanderer'

By Robert H.Miller
Tidings Reviewer

George Bernard Shaw, the Irish playwright, was just 37 years old when, in 1893, he penned "The Philanderer," though it was not staged until 1902. It has been rarely performed since. Now, as part of its 2005 repertory, Oregon Shakespeare Festival rescues it from obscurity in a production that graces the Bowmer Theatre. Old wine should be this sparkling.

Shaw, by this time, had earned a reputation as a discerning and incisive critic of art, music, and drama. If he had an idol other than himself, it probably was Henrik Ibsen, the Norwegian dramatist whose plays - such as "A Doll's House," "Ghosts," "Hedda Gabler," and "The Master Builder," all dealing with the status of women - had a powerful influence on Shaw. It is little wonder that "The Philanderer" became a tribute to Ibsenism and the New Woman, with Shaw conceiving the mythical Ibsen Club in London whose membership was denied to "womanly women" and "manly men," the sexes here being treated as equals.

When the play opens, a lady and gentleman are making love to one another in the drawing-room of a flat in the Victoria district of London. It is past ten at night. The gentleman is Leonard Charteris (Derrick Lee Weeden), the philanderer, making advances to an Advanced Woman and widow, Grace Tranfield (Vilma Silva). Others involved in the not-too-cozy coterie are Colonel Craven (Mark Murphey) and his two daughters, Julia (Miriam A. Laube) and Sylvia (Aisha Kabia); Joseph Cuthbertson (James Edmondson), Grace's father; and Doctor Paramore (Jeff Cummings), the Colonel's dubious, lovelorn physician. With three women to handle, one of whom obtained membership in the club under false pretenses, the philanderer finds himself bewitched, bothered, and bewildered.

Penny Metropulos directs splendidly and, since music is the food of love, interpolates musical interludes - the work of music director, Sterling Tinsley - that are both refreshing and revealing. Consider the opening diversion, before the play begins, when the pageboy (John Tufts) cuts a Cockney caper with Aisha Kabia, the theme being "Would You Like to Spoon with Me?" Tufts is again on hand when Colonel Craven and Joseph Cuthbertson sing a paean to a wonderful world for men. And Tufts does a solo song and dance later to a phonograph record. This young actor absolutely twinkles right down to his toes.

William Bloodgood's scenic design is superb. The huge white-framed picture of a couple holding hands over a chessboard cleverly splits apart as the play opens, setting the mood of separateness and period, with a row of old-time footlights. When the action moves to the library of the Ibsen Club in London, he uses another impressive painting as a backdrop, this time of the Norwegian dramatist. The lighting design by Michael Chybowski is highly effective.

To my ears, the English spoken here is exceptionally clean and clear, and much of the credit must surely go to voice and text director, David Carey, voice tutor at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, London. It adds so much to our enjoyment, enabling us to appreciate Shaw's lively dialogue and the frequent Shavian shafts against Victorianism, vivisection, medicine, and even fox hunting (banned in Britain last November).

The actors delight with scintillating performances. Ladies first: Vilma Silva, who imparts cool assurance to Grace Tranfield; Miriam A. Laube, passionate and petulant as Julia Craven; and Aisha Kabia, the very self-assured teenage Sylvia Craven.

As for the men, Derrick Lee Weeden, with his sly brilliance, is the philanderer to perfection; Mark Murphey, as Colonel Craven, querulously mooches around at death's door, vexed and perplexed, until he brings everyone to order as their commanding officer. It's a great scene. James Edmondson as Joseph Cuthbertson affects an honorable earnestness; after all, he's a drama critic and a man of some consequence. Jeff Cummings as Doctor Paramore melts down marvelously when the British Medical Journal disclaims the disease he supposedly discovered. Quite a contrast is his perkiness when he pitches his woo to Julia.

Christina Poddubiuk, the costume designer dresses the cast, men and women alike, with flair, infinite detail, and strong colors. The gowns are gorgeous, and I specially liked the fetching trousered suit worn by Sylvia.

In the Preface to his "Plays, Pleasant and Unpleasant, Vol.1 (1913)," which include "The Philanderer," Shaw wrote: "There is an old saying that if a man has not fallen in love before 40, he had better not fall in love after. I long ago perceived that this rule applied to many other matters as well: For example to the writing of plays, and I made a rough memorandum for my own guidance that unless I could produce at least half-a-dozen plays before I was 40, I had better let playwriting alone." How fortunate for the playgoer that he met his goal.

Reality of the mule is brilliant

By Chris Honoré
For the Tidings

Consider the accolades earned by "Maria Full of Grace": Winner of the Dramatic Audience Award at Sundance Film Festival; winner of six awards at the Cartagena Film Festival; Catalina Sandino Moreno, nominated for an Academy Award as best actress in a lead role.

This debut film, written and directed by Joshua Marston, is electrifying, an astonishingly powerful story told with a confident deliberateness that compels as the tension is ratcheted up, and the narrative string pulled ever so tight.

From the opening frames, when the audience is introduced to Maria (Catalina Sandino Moreno), it becomes clear that this young woman, working at a flower plantation stripping thorns from roses, is trapped in a cycle that skirts poverty and offers no hope of any future other than the one that stretches before her.

However, we quickly see that Maria is bright, gutsy and strong-willed. When she is mistreated at work she abruptly quits and though pressured by her family to return and apologize to her boss, she refuses. But, like so many young women living in Colombia, she has few options and compounding her already precarious situation, she discovers that she is pregnant.

Knowing that she will not marry her boyfriend, that he has no wish to marry her, she is seduced into being a "mule" by a recruiter. This suave young man from Bogota' introduces her to a world about which she has only the barest understanding. But the money is more than she could ever imagine, and represents a door to her own salvation. Or so she believes.

Giving the film a grainy, documentary texture, which enhances the verisimilitude of the story, Marston introduces Maria and the audience to a world that is certainly foreign and filled with unimaginable risk.

She comes to understand that what she must do is not just "carry" drugs to New York. She must swallow some 60 pellet-size balloons of heroine, and when she arrives in New York, must take a laxative and then pass them into a bathtub while the dealers wait. The dangers are enormous: If a balloon breaks, she will die from an overdose; if she is caught by Customs, she will be arrested and put in jail; if she tries to escape, her family in Colombia will be killed.

To Marston's credit, Maria's journey, while gripping, never slides into the melodramatic. None of the characters are exaggerated or become caricatures, tempting to be sure, which only heightens the impact of the film.

And it is impossible not to care about this young woman who finds herself in harm's way. Because Moreno lives the role, inhabiting her character, she turns in a performance that is not only convincing but harrowing. The flight from Bogota' to New York alone is astonishing for its sustained uncertainty.

Admiration for Maria, for her grit and courage, only increases as she is repeatedly tested by one crisis after another, not only upon her arrival at JFK but during the days that follow.

"Body packing" or smuggling ingested drugs is a reality that is ever with us. More than 14,512 "mules" were intercepted at JFK in 2003. The estimated amount spent annually by Americans for heroine and cocaine is $46 billion. The average per capita income in Colombia is $1,830. Eighty percent of rural Colombians live in poverty. For one "mule run" a courier is paid $8,000. That is the context for this truly astonishing film.