April 6, 2016
Page 13
Arts &
ENTERTAINMENT
Diversity of Talent Unsurpassed
c ontinued froM P age 9
hope and faith that is so rare that it
is missed sometimes even by those
who possess it.
Orta’s use of folklore grounds
the story, revealing the spiritual risk
that holds each of the four young-
er characters back in some way.
Like the best folklore, the play’s
mystical elements reveal truths
that can’t be captured any other
way. The play offers a window into
the vantage point of each of these
four, floating back and forth among
them, moving us deeper and deep-
er until we see more and still more
ways that each grasps for a differ-
ent kind of life and each lacks the
simple faith it takes to achieve it.
What a lovely, soulful gift these
talented players are offering us--it
resonated deeply with my own ex-
perience of the miracle of love and
the dread that keeps so many peo-
ple from finding it.
You’ll have all season (till Oct.
30) to catch this year’s excellent
production of “Twelfth Night,”
which hummed with buoyant en-
ergy at opening and will just get
better and better. Set in 1930s
Hollywood, the production revels
in the flamboyance of styles and
emerging flexibility of gender roles
(however incipient) that existed in
that era, and turns the play’s court-
ly kingdom into Hollywoodland,
an apt casting choice.
The production delightfully
casts two terrific black actors in
significant roles, giving us a mix-
ture of 1930s Hollywood as it
was and might have been. Gina
Daniels plays Olivia, the countess
of Shakespeare’s play, as a glam-
orous Hollywood starlet poised
between reveling in her star pow-
er and feeling confined in its trap,
which gives her attraction to the
boyish Viola-as-Sebastian particu-
lar resonance. Daniels is delicious
in the role, smooth and sly and de-
termined and gorgeous as any good
starlet should be. (Her costumes
are particularly wonderful, too).
And Rodney Gardner plays the fool
with just the right knowing air -- he
glides through his scenes (quite lit-
erally at times) and captures how a
person outside the social hierarchy
often can class up the place and be
the smartest person in the room.
The rest of the cast is also very
fine, notably Sara Bruner as Viola/
Sebastian, who moves between
male and female with wonderful-
ly jittery energy which seems to
suggest that neither expression
contains her wholly. A trio of com-
ic characters (skillfully played by
Daniel T. Parker, Danforth Comins,
and Kate Mulligan) function to set
various tops spinning throughout
the play, and to torment Olivia’s
unctuous steward, Malvolio, who
Ted Deasy manages to pitch at a
delightful balance between annoy-
ing and sympathetic. A gorgeous
set with a broad winding staircase
a la Fred Astaire gives them won-
derful spaces to dance and tousle.
Director Christopher Liam Moore
has once again choreographed a
space that calls forth the best from
the company and invites all of us to
a first-class party.
Buoyed by the success of its
2011 production of “The Pirates
of Penzance,” OSF has enlisted
director Sean Graney and his team
of co-adapters to mount another
Gilbert & Sullivan production --
“The Yeoman of the Guard” -- with
Graney’s characteristically playful
style of updating and genre-bend-
ing. They have set this production
in an eclectic country-and-western
style, with a portion of the audi-
ence participating with the actors
on stage. If all of that sounds intim-
idating -- it’s really not. Whether or
not you like Gilbert & Sullivan or
country-and-Western music, there
is good reason to hope that this
production will keep you giggling
and tapping your feet.
Finally, this season includes a
staging of the beloved Dickens’
novel, “Great Expectations,” newly
adapted by director Penny Metrop-
ulos and Linda Alper. I found this
production a bit stolid and too
much like a staged reading -- but
nevertheless was quite touched by
many of the performances, and ex-
pect that love of the source mate-
rial will carry this production into
the hearts of many audience mem-
bers. Like “Yeoman” and “Twelfth
Night,” it also will run all season.
Darleen Ortega is a judge on
the Oregon Court of Appeals and
the first woman of color to serve
in that capacity. She also serves
on the Oregon Shakespeare Fes-
tival board. Her movie review
column Opinionated Judge ap-
pears regularly in The Portland
Observer. You can find her movie
blog at opinionatedjudge.blog-
spot.com.
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