Brushing Up On My Shakespeare

(Last week I recorded the beginnings of my quest to become a fully Cultured Person™. This week I will bring you, dear readers, along on that journey, which will eventually lead to triumphant success.)

In the Western World, an understanding and familiarity with the works of Shakespeare is perhaps second only to knowing the Holy Scriptures for acquiring cultural literacy. So what better place to pursue knowledge of the Bard than the Oregon Shakespeare Festival? (Well, England would have probably been a better place, but that wasn’t in the budget.)

The Oregon Shakespeare Festival was founded in 1935 and has been an ongoing part of the culture and economy of the small city of Ashland, OR, for all those years. The Festival began that first year with Twelfth Night rotating with The Merchant of Venice. In later years, other plays have joined the repertory without ever dropping the guy the festival was named for. This year the options were The Scottish Play, Coriolanus, and Much Ado About Nothing for the traditionalists, along with Jane Eyre, Behfarmaheen (If You Please), Born with Teeth, and Lizard Boy. There is also a one-woman show, Virgins to Villains: My Journey with Shakespeare’s Women.

We booked a room in Ashland’s highly appropriate Stratford Inn, which features a small library of Shakespearean work. And a dragon. It was an easy walking distance from the festival theaters – the Angus Bowmer Theatre, the Courtyard Stage, the Thomas Theatre, and the Allen Elizabethan Theatre which housed our choice, Much Ado About Nothing.

I admit I partly chose this play because I was familiar with it and already loved it. The 1993 Kenneth Branaugh adaptation was spoiled only by the casting of Keanu Reeves as Don John. Unfortunately, Reeves was not very convincing as the brother of Don Pedro played by Denzel Washington. Also, Keanu, a seemingly dear man, can’t act. At least not Shakespeare. I also saw Joss Whedon’s 2011 adaptation which is pretty decent.

You always read about strange productions of Shakespeare… all canine productions of Hamlet or Julius Caesar set in a Nursery School. I was a little concerned when I read these words in the director’s introduction to the play, “As I think about the state of the world, the terrible cost of war in the Middle East and the Ukraine, and this upcoming election in which democracy hangs in the balance, I need the hope seared into this play -- hope that we can find those we thought we lost, hope that our humanity is not forgotten, and hope that ever-elusive possibility to begin again.”

I mean, I appreciate her concern about the harm Biden could do if he was re-elected, but I became worried Don John would be made to look like Orange Man Bad. Instead it was a pretty straightforward presentation of this wonderful comedy. The one obvious change was a three-man band on stage with period instruments and the occasional sung soliloquy by characters. Which led to a bit of strangeness at the play’s end.

To tell you about this, I do have to give some spoilers from the work. The play’s ingénue heroine, Hero, has her character slandered to her fiance, Claudio. Claudio believes Don John’s lies and denounces his bride-to-be at the wedding. The officiant priest persuades her to fake her own death while her name is cleared. After the villains are exposed, Hero comes back in a wonderful imagining of resurrection.

In every production of the play I’ve seen, Hero happily forgives her father and Claudio for the truly shabby way they have treated her. The mock resurrection and real forgiveness make Hero a bit of a Christ figure in the work.

But in this production, just before the play’s conclusion, Hero sings a little song about whether she really should forgive Claudio. Perhaps he deserves to suffer for what he has done. And then at the very end of the play, Claudio calls to Hero and she freezes with the spotlight upon her. Will she forgive him or not?

If one considers Hero’s position, she really has little agency in her society. If her father says she is to marry, she must; if he says she shouldn’t, she will not. But she does have a choice in attitude. This subtle change seems to reflect current societal values that prioritize Holding Someone Accountable over Forgiveness. Forgiveness often isn’t even considered a virtuous value.

The true heart of the show is the courtship of Beatrice and Benedict, initiated as a prank by others and always full of bickering, yet heartwarming and perhaps the basis of every rom-com to come.

Of course, I’m sure you’re all most concerned about the property history of the theater where I viewed this show. As was the case at my symphony visit the previous week, the program began with an announcement that the stage was built on land previously occupied by indigenous people. Do what you will with this information.

More culture is to come, and you have the opportunity to see my incredible transformation into a Cultured Person.