The Oregon Shakespeare Festival, 1967

Abstract

HE Shakespeare Festival at Ashland, Oregon, this summer for its rotating plays chose two hard ones: Pericles and Antony and Cleopatra, in addition to Richard III, and, for its fourth play, the perennially popular The Taming of The Shrew. How did Ashland fare with the difficult plays: Pericles, of questioned authorship, an ancient romance put on the stage narrative fashion, and Antony and Cleopatra, high tragedy, but with the loose construction, digressions, and off-stage complexities of a history play? The impossible Pericles was turned into a hit by the sheer perfection of style of Nagle Jackson's production. The tragedy of passion with a world conflict for its background had a Cleopatra and at least half an Antony. Pericles, when I had seen it before at Ashland, was a handsome spectacle. This summer's production made the preposterous succession of romantic events exciting and even had moments that were moving. This was accomplished with no imposed interpretation, no attempt to link the play with some contemporary theory, but solely by penetrating to the heart of the play, seeing it for what it is. Janus-masked stage managers, comedy facing one way and tragedy the other, opened the play, and the full cast in splendid costume was brought on as Old Gower began his tale. The cast withdrew as Gower set the stage for the wicked court at Antioch, and the heads of knights who had lost the trial of the riddle were placed in the inner below, suspended from a frame. The incestuous King, in black and sinister green, appeared on the balcony above. At the end of the play, as the cast went off to celebrate with Pericles, they froze in position while Gower pointed the moral in the life of each character. A color scheme for each episode changed the moods as clearly as Gower's interpolations and the restrained and patterned pantomimes. Pericles, the good hero, was in blue; a white King Creon and black Queen on the balcony, with hooded grey famine figures below illustrating the narration, saved the awkwardness of dialogue that recounts facts known to the speakers. Later, a red veil changed Dionyza to a murderess. The dark shipwreck scene, with square sails flashing in the light, was succeeded by a sunburst of red and orange and gold in the court of the jolly King who made a match of it between Pericles and his daughter, a splendid scene of feasting and dancing with musicians playing from the gallery. The somber, earthy colors of the brothel gave place to the temple with white Vestals and Diana with her silver bow descending from the clouds. The production was more than spectacle. The wicked Antiochus (Glen Mazen) was played with restrained, melodramatic villainy, in a precise style caught by every member of the cast. Pericles was a princely figure by Tom