Twelfth Night, Hamlet, The Winters’ Tale, Richard II, Timon of Athens, presented by the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, February-November 2016. Geoff Ridden Independent Scholar
[email protected] Twelfth Night. Director: Christopher Liam Moore. With Sara Bruner (Viola/Sebastian), Gina Daniels (Olivia), Ted Deasy (Malvolio), and Rodney Gardiner (Feste). Hamlet. Director: Lisa Peterson. With Danforth Comins (Hamlet), Christiana Clark (Horatio), and Derrick Lee Weeden (Polonius). The Winter’s Tale. Director: Desdemona Chiang. With Eric Steinberg (Leontes), Amy Kim Waschke (Hermione), and Miriam Laube (Paulina). Richard II. Director: Bill Rauch. With Christopher Liam Moore (King Richard II), and Jeffrey King (Henry Bullingbrook). Timon of Athens. Director: Amanda Dehnert. With Anthony Heald (Timon), Vilma Silva (Apemantus), and Jonathan Haugen (Alcibiades). After the 2015 season, which staged only three Shakespeare productions, the Festival returned to a full complement of Shakespeare in 2016, using all three of its performances spaces. Sadly, another member of the acting company died of cancer this season: Judith-Marie Bergan was in her fifteenth year at OSF, playing the role of Miss Havisham in an adaptation of Great Expectations, having previously acted in some seven Shakespeare plays. 1 Twelfth Night This was the first production to open, and had the longest run of any of the five Shakespeare plays. It was staged in the Bowmer Theatre and proved to be an exuberant and enjoyable production, but not one which was always faithful to the play which Shakespeare wrote, not least in its changing of the order of scenes. The production was set in 1930s Hollywood, and it opened with the imposing edifice on the stage of the doors to Illyria Productions, and with the screening of two newsreels (from Folio Studios): the first told us that the movie star, Olivia, had pulled out of What You Will after her brother had died; the second that a pair of wealthy twins had been shipwrecked.