The Taming
of the Shrewd
Do rich gifts wax poor in the elite bubble of
Ashland's Oregon Shakespeare Festival?
by Rick Levin
I
f, like me, you happen find yourself
on some clear summer night seated
just about dead center of the orchestra
level at Oregon Shakespeare Festival’s
tremendous outdoor Allen Elizabethan
Theatre, and it happens to be late into the second
act of The Odyssey, with the sun fallen and the
gloaming past, darkness pushing down on the
ghostly radiance of the lights, the actors strutting
and fretting their moment on stage, the whole
wide world in abeyance, its awful tempest and
clangoring tumult silenced, just you and your
itty-bitty mortal consciousness beholding the
enactment of a text that is ten-thousand years old,
take a moment and look up.
ODYSSEUS (CHRISTOPHER DONAHUE, TOP) IS REUNITED WITH HIS SON TELEMACHUS (BENJAMIN BONENFANT)
PHOTO BY JENNY GRAHAM, OREGON SHAKESPEARE FESTIVAL
eugeneweekly.com • June 29, 2017
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