May 13, 2015
Page A9
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Wrapped Up
in Humanity
O PINIONATED
J UDGE
BY J UDGE
D ARLEEN O RTEGA
Oregon Shakespeare
Festival works
stir heart and soul
Love. Loss. Longing. Hope. Treachery. Resilience. All
are the stuff of human existence -- and also the stuff of the-
ater. In real life, even as we suffer and struggle, it can be
hard to sit with the depth of our experience. The feelings,
even the good ones, may be too profound, too painful. Two
shows now playing at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival,
by different methods, plunge us there, offering the chance
to feel what we may often only have the courage to give a
sidelong glance.
“Pericles”--Shakespeare’s tale of love, betrayal, loss,
and recovery -- offers the way of poetry and song. “Se-
cret Love in Peach Blossom Land” -- a beloved Taiwan-
ese play that sprang from the seeds of a tragic episode in
Chinese history -- offers interlocking pathways of humor
and pathos.
“Pericles” isn’t performed often, though it was quite
popular in Shakespeare’s day. Perhaps back then people
were more receptive to a story that doesn’t try to answer
why bad things happen to good people, or why good things
might just happen again. We expect answers to such ques-
tions now -- but in reality, life doesn’t always offer them.
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having to run for his life when he stumbles into a nest of
incest and treachery. Then, having righted his path and
found love and family, he loses both for many years. He
lives in exile, separated from the wife and daughter he be-
lieves are dead. His daughter then also encounters peril
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There is no rhyme or reason for any of this. Neither
Pericles nor his wife and daughter deserve the perils that
befall them. They are buffeted about, shipwrecked, used,
enslaved. Life is unfair -- yet without warning, things can
be set right too.
Director Joe Haj, the son of Palestinian immigrants,
brings to the play an enthusiasm for the mysteries embed-
ded in life’s unfairness. This is not a play that reinforces
our wish to believe that everything happens for a reason,
but that is territory immigrants know well. And among a
uniformly wonderful cast, Pericles and his daughter Ma-
rina are beautifully played by African-American actors
PHOTO BY J ENNY G RAHAM
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Hume, U. Jonathan Toppo, Cedric Lamar) in the Oregon Shakespeare Festival production of a classic tale of love,
betrayal, loss and recovery.
Wayne T. Carr and Jennie Greenberry; their heritage es-
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members are lost to them and whose control of their desti-
nies is taken from them by brutal circumstances.
Father and daughter offer contrasting responses to the
whims of fortune. Pericles begins his life with beauty and
wealth and naively embarks on his life’s voyage assuming
that all will be well. When his fortunes are dashed, he is
stripped of hope, and lives for many years isolated and
defeated. Marina, never having tasted the bright truth of
her heritage and with no more reason to hope, neverthe-
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though convinced that she is master of her destiny in the
face of all evidence to the contrary.
The play doesn’t answer why any of this should be so,
and the artists yield to its mysteries. Director Haj and his
artistic team have found inventive ways to convey that
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duction with music and buoyant visual effects. The jour-
ney they take us on over these rough seas communicates
on a soul level.
“Secret Love in Peach Blossom Land” is also a tale of
journeys and separations, and traveled quite a distance to
land on the Ashland stage. It is perhaps the most famous
play in modern Chinese theater, having been produced
hundreds of times since the original Taiwanese produc-
tion in the mid-1980s. It is directed and written by Stan
Lai, who was born in Washington, D.C. to Chinese parents
from Taiwan but who has spent most of his life in Taiwan.
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The play is rooted in a particularly painful period in
Chinese history. In 1949, when revolution happened on
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of Taiwan for what they expected would be a few months.
Those few months stretched into decades when families
and lovers and friends were separated and not allowed to
communicate with one another. The resulting tragic rip-
ples for both Chinese and Taiwanese people are profound,
though little understood by people in the U.S.
“Secret Love in Peach Blossom Land” builds off of
those tragic ripples, with a story of two plays being re-
hearsed on a stage which has been double-booked by mis-
take. “Secret Love” tells the tragic story of two Chinese
lovers about to part for what they believe will be a matter
of weeks, and then reconnecting in Taiwan after 40 years.
“Peach Blossom Land” is a farcical take on an ancient
fable about a hapless cuckolded husband who is unhap-
py with his life and then stumbles on a mythical utopian
place. “Secret Love” is direct and poignant; “Peach Blos-
som Land” is stylized and full of slapstick and buffoonery.
Watching the two stories take shape is chaotic, as the casts
squabble and both productions fumble. An essential part of
the play -- and perhaps part of what gives it such staying
power -- is that each production makes use of its particu-
lar time and place, so the OSF production cleverly uses a
multiracial cast and weaves in some Ashland in-jokes. It’s
a stretch for an American audience to grapple with material
so distinctly Chinese -- and yet the payoff is immense. What
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