August 12, 2015
O pinionated
J udge
Page 11
Arts &
ENTERTAINMENT
Oregon Shakespeare Festival’s Summer Season Highlights
by J udge
D arleen O rtega
The height of the Oregon
Shakespeare Festival season is
underway, which means three out-
door shows and two new shows
inside. I’ve yet to see Sweat,
Lynn Nottage’s new play explor-
ing life as experienced by those
on the losing end of the decline
of American industry; I’ll see it
in September and expect to be in-
spired to write about it, given the
buzz I am hearing. There is some
delightful variety among the other
four shows, though I can’t quite
recommend all of them.
The Happiest Song Plays Last
completes Quiara Alegria Hudes’
trilogy of plays exploring the ex-
periences of Puerto Rican cous-
ins Elliott and Yaz. (Water By the
Spoonful moved me last year, as
I expressed in my review earlier
this year). In this play, set later in
time, Iraq war veteran Elliott, still
struggling with the physical and
psychic wounds of his military
service, spends some time in Jor-
dan working as an actor on a film
that stirs up some of those wartime Count of Monte Cristo
memories. His timing coincides
with the Arab spring protests, and
the connections he makes on this
return visit to the Middle East
deepen his thinking about how to
carry his own pain and the pain
he has inflicted on others. Mean-
while, his cousin Yaz has become
a leader in their home Puerto Ri-
can community in Philadelphia,
and is engaged in her own struggle
over how to manage the fury and
hope of activism and the limits of
her own resources.
This play, like Water, stands
on its own, though experience
with others in the trilogy enrich-
es the action. These are charac-
ters to savor; their dilemmas will
resonate especially among com-
munities of color, where activ- Antony and Cleopatra
ists like Yaz may struggle with
similar quandaries and where
many young people have found
that military service promised
them opportunities but left them
with scars and trauma they could
not have anticipated. This pro-
duction features an extremely
gifted cast--notably, Armando
Duran brings music and soul to
his portrayal of a heroic voice
denied recognition that he de-
served in both life and death;
Nancy Rodriguez captures the
depth of Yaz’s hopes and disap-
pointments; and Barzin Akha-
van’s portrayal of an Iraqi man
with whom Elliott shares a con-
nection feels especially reverent
and rich. One senses the work
of soul and community that di- Head Over Heels
rector Shishir Kurup and his
talented cast and design team
have nurtured in creating this
production; their invitation into
the lives of these characters feels
like a call to dialogue with deep-
er questions, for those who can
hear that invitation.
My hands-on favorite of the
outdoor shows is Head Over
Heels, a bawdy mash-up of story,
song, and themes that one could
not have imagined would work
together so brilliantly. It is the
brainchild of Coos Bay native
Jeff Whitty, who won a Tony
Award for his book for the wit-
ty and irreverent Avenue Q. This
time he has combined an Elizabe-
than story that captured his imag-
ination while he was a student at
the University of Oregon, with
the music of the Go-Go’s--and
then further tweaked the story in
ways that are truly inspired.
The bone structure of the origi-
nal story involves a king who has
two daughters, one a beauty with
many suitors, the other plain, with
just one suitor who is beneath the
king’s social standards. An oracle
makes ominous predictions about
the future of the king’s family
that he seeks to avoid, so he takes
them into the forest to thwart the
oracle--and each prediction comes
true.
To this Whitty adds not only
the upbeat music of the ground-
breaking, all-women ‘80s band,
but also some distinctly current el-
ements. The actresses playing the
two daughters are brilliantly cast
against type--the “plain” daugh-
ter (Tala Ashe) is conventionally
pretty and demure, and the beau-
tiful daughter (Bonnie Milligan)
is a voluptuous vocal powerhouse
who likely does not typically get
cast as the beauty. Their respec-
tive energy is wonderfully, com-
ically refreshing, as are the cos-
tumes, a gender-bending plot line
involving the “plain” daughter’s
unsuitable suitor, and the beautiful
daughter’s emerging sexual iden-
tity. I am telling you, this new
play is headed places – and you
can be one of the first to catch it in
its artistic home.
I had the particular good fortune
to experience the opening per-
formance sitting directly behind
Whitty (who was suitably emo-
tional and whose friends and bud-
dies were over the moon) and two
rows behind the Go-Go’s them-
selves. I’m just slightly younger
than they are, and could not help
C ontinued on P age 14