Page 16
March 21, 2018
Fresh Take on Two Classics
C ontinued From P age 2
ceral energy that Shakespeare’s words emerge as if in
a genuine fight for clarity. Yet Molina still channels the
young wastrel; his cynicism still courses not far below
the surface, so that his struggles for meaning contain a
sense of playfulness and even mischief. He is a marvel
to watch, and is backed by an equally marvelous, facile,
and energetic cast that feels much larger than it is.
Director Rosa Joshi has said that she conceives
Shakespeare’s history plays as being more about pol-
itics than history and this production successfully
pitches the action in a register that feels both specific
and universal. What compels people to follow a lead-
er? What is the distance between what compels them
and the actual person? What are the costs of war and
the incentives that drive it? The staging is spare, with
a vibrant design that involves interlocking boxes which
shift and move throughout the production, often in a
manner that helps us grasp what the story’s fights and
struggles and deaths are costing the characters. Death
and bloodshed and scene changes are conveyed with
splashes of color and shifts in energy; the design and
action have been enlisted to lend the action immediacy.
It’s an original approach and part of what makes this
production feel relevant and fresh.
Photo by J enny g raham , o regon s hakesPeare F estivaL
Bardolph (Robert Vincent Frank, in back) tries to keep his drinking buddies from killing each other in ‘Henvy V,’
Shakespeare’s play about a young king who openly struggles with the questions of what it means to be a political
leader.
“Sense and Sensibility” is pitched in a different reg-
ister entirely; We are in Jane Austen’s England, and di-
rector Hana Sharif is an Austen fan who wants us to
experience a Regency aesthetic. And yet that aesthetic
is delightfully askew in a way that reveals its truth. In
the usual Austen story, the conflicts seem appealingly
frivolous; though women are central, romance and mar-
riage are the focus, which seems fluffy to our modern
eyes. But in Sharif’s rendering, working from a smart
script by Kate Hamill, we see more clearly how high
the stakes are for these women; it’s a world where a
good match is one’s only hope for avoiding poverty, no
matter how bright and witty one is.
The production strikes a very delicate balance that
preserves Austen’s humor and light touch while build-
ing a sense of the extremes that drive the story. The
oppression and social forces that underlie all the social
niceties that the characters feel constrained to observe
make sense of their occasional pettiness, the harsh
judgments that ruin reputations, the gossip that drives
so much of the action, the nervous complaints that neu-
tralize women and facilitate their mistreatment. Some-
how I sensed that this talented cast, which is dominated
by people of color, was particularly well equipped to
convey a lived- in sense of what it means to be trapped
and constrained.
In this setting, the Austen happy ending resonates
more deeply, especially because here, the action cul-
minates in a final scene that is pure joy. I don’t want to
spoil it, so I’ll just say that in those last moments, all
that has gone before is lifted and the women at the heart
of the story find a buoyancy that resonates all the more
because they so embodied its absence.
Darleen Ortega is a judge on the Oregon Court of
Appeals and the first woman of color to serve in that
capacity. Her movie review column Opinionated Judge
appears regularly in The Portland Observer. Find her
movie blog at opinionatedjudge.blogspot.com.
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