August 26, 1994
Dear Everyone:
Just when I get a nice set of mailing labels typed up, somebody changes
their address. In this case,
“Hermione” (see attached). For
those of you who might not remember “Hermione”, she's the nice lady who
lives in Oregon and who used to read “Byron’s” copy of the Weekly
Letter. When I finally got
“Byron’s” new address and the Letters stop coming, “Hermione” wrote to
ask that she be added to the Mailing List and included some stamps as in
encouragement. Although we've yet
to meet, she's been on the Mailing List ever since.
Now about our annual pilgrimage to
Ashland for
the Oregon Shakespeare Festival.
As can be expected, it had an
assortment of highs and lows.
The weather was a plus. Not too
hot, not too cold. Apparently,
they decided to have their heat wave in July (hottest on record) this
year, and I'm glad we missed it. So
you could go for a comfortable stroll through
Lithia Park, or visit the shops, or just sit in the shade somewhere
and read a book. Very nice.
On the other hand, we could easily have done without that chemical spill
which closed I-5
right at the Oregon/California border, forcing “Jeannie” and me to go 50
miles out of our way to get around it. Of
course, routes 97 and 66 are much more scenic than I-5.
But they're also a lot more
squiggly.
Our hotel rooms were a plus; they faced East, away from the afternoon
sun. The bathrooms (also known as
the Torture Chamber) were the usual minus:
Tiny shower (with the slanting
floor), leaky toilet (with the broken seat, regardless of
which room you get), ancient
sink, and absolutely nothing to put anything down on.
Dinner on Wednesday, our first full day there, was especially nice.
We had been invited to a special
"Thank You" dinner for Patron Members and their guests, along with a
couple of fund-raiser people and four members of the Acting Company who
happily chatted with us about the current and past seasons.
It's not everyone who can claim
to have had dinner with Don John and Benedick of
Much Ado
About Nothing and Queen Gertrude from
Hamlet all in one
evening.
On the downside, Mother's friend “Amy”, who joined us to take advantage
of an extra set of tickets that we had, came down with a cold that
quickly escalated into pneumonia, requiring in a couple of visits to the
local hospital. Happily, I
understand that she is much better now. We
had the extra tickets because “Kelly” stayed home this year, taking care
of little “Park” and giving “Alice” a much-needed break from Motherhood.
The plays were all good, of course. Hamlet
left us all a bit baffled. The
director took "time is out of joint" as his theme.
Each character was dressed out of
a different time period. And the
set seemed to consist mostly of scaffolding and plastic sheets,
inexpensive to make, of course, but confusing.
And, for the record, we weren't
the only ones who didn't get it. We
heard the questions about this play all over town.
On the plus side, Richard Howard
(Hamlet) looked gorgeous in
those Armani-style
suits.
The Tempest
storm scene was too loud to understand anything; but after that it
settled down nicely. The Two Noble
Kinsman is not produced very often, on the grounds that
Shakespeare probably only wrote half of it, although no one can agree on
which parts were his. It's a
"tragicomedy", a comedy with a tragic ending.
Two Noble cousins fall in love
with the same woman, fight each other over her and are rather surprised
when one of them dies. “Jeannie”
summed it up in one sentence: "Men are
so
dumb!"
You
Can't Take It With You
was the one non-Shakespearean play that we saw.
Originally produced in the 1930s,
it's about two families, one straight-laced, one off-the-wall and what
happens when their children want to get married.
It was especially delightful to
see Michelle Farr play daffy, ballet-dancing Essie in the afternoon, and
a quite mature Beatrice the
same night in Much Ado About
Nothing, which we've seen 5 times now, if you count the
Kenneth Branagh
film.
At night, the usual play postmortem would quickly degenerate into a kind
of slumber party, with everyone in their "jammies" and “Alice” and
“Frankie” throwing fruit at each other. I
have photographs, suitable for framing, or blackmail, depending on your
point of view.
Love, as always,
Pete
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