OSF: A Wrinkle in Time

It is a bonus when our interests in theater and astronomy intersect, and that is happening this season at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival in Ashland with its production of A Wrinkle in Time, based on the 1962 novel of the same title by Madeleine L'Engle. The OSF play is a world premiere adapted and directed by Tracy Young.

Alejandra Escalante as Meg Murry in Oregon Shakespeare
Festival's production of A Wrinke in Time.

In A Wrinkle in Time math whiz Meg Murry (Alejandra Escalante), her über-genius little brother Charles Wallace Murry (Sara Bruner), and pal Calvin O'Keefe (Joe Wegner) zip around the universe in search of missing papa Murry (Dan Donohue). They accomplish their travel by bending time and space in a tesseract, or "tessering," as explained by the helpful science fair project by Science Girl (Jada Rae Perry).

Kids traversing the universe make for some imaginative and wonderfully silly stage effects and costumes, and we think especially of the multi-tentacled Aunt Beast (Daniel T. Parker), for whose costume a good half-dozen vacuum cleaners must have given their lives, or at least their hoses.

The performances are top-notch. We single out Escalante and Bruner especially, as well as Judith-Marie Bergan, who was much fun as Mrs. Whatsit, something of an intergalactic tour guide for the adventurers. Bergan, we think, can play anything, from the comic to the manic (as we note my Sweetie, the official scorer's, recent review of last year's production of The Tenth Muse.)

For all of its goofiness, the play takes on some serious themes about the mysteries of the universe, the nature of time and space, the dangers and advantages of technology, and of the strength and importance of family ties and love. The science isn't so heavy that you need to be a cosmologist or physicist or a math geek like Meg to get it, though a bit of sci-fi familiarity with the concept is helpful.

According to the program notes the book took criticism from all sides when it came out, some charging it with being too religious and others saying it is too secular. That feels like it hit the right spot! The book also has some Cold War undertones about how things would look under a totalitarian society.

We've not read the book but plan to pick it up when we return home from Ashland. The play runs at the Angus Bowmer Theatre through November 1. It's great fun; check it out!

OSF: Romeo and Juliet

Tuesday we kicked off a two-week visit to the Oregon Shakespeare Festival by attending a performance of Romeo and Juliet, directed by Laird Williamson.

Alejandra Escalante as Juliet. OSF
photo by Jenny Graham.

Romeo and Juliet always seems to be a challenge. It is performed so often—this is the 13th time it has been produced at OSF since the festival began in 1935—and the text is so familiar that one has to wonder what else they're going to do with it. In this case, Williamson chose to set the play around the time of the Gold Rush in late 1840s California. But frankly, I didn't find myself thinking much about the setting during the show. It was still just about two kids from feuding families going ga-ga for each other. 

The two kids are played marvelously by newcomers to the festival. Daniel José Molina makes his OSF debut this year as Romeo, and Alejandra Escalante is in her second year, having played Juliet in Measure for Measure in 2011. It seems the temptation is to either cast the two leads as numbskull teenagers and discount their love, or as deadly serious and forget they're kids. Williamson, Molina, and Escalante strike a good balance between the two. 

The rest of the performances were solid, too, but a couple of them stood out. Isabell Monk O'Connor was great as the nurse to Juliet. Jason Rojas, another new face to OSF, was fantastic as Mercutio. OSF veteran Tony DeBruno, in his 20th season at the festival, was spot-on as the friar, though his note to Romeo doesn't get delivered in time, which leads to a tragic end.

It is not always so, necessarily. The first time we saw Romeo and Juliet in Ashland, the leads were played by John Tufts and Christine Albright; while they finished the play stone dead in the Capulet crypt, they eventually married in real life. Though that 2007 production pre-dates the Weisenheimer blog, it remains memorable in that it was the only time we've been rained on here in eight years attending the festival. While we were under cover of the roof, I was worried about Albright in particular, who spent the night getting drenched wearing naught but a flimsy nightgown for the show. Somehow she avoided pneumonia. They've gone on to be regulars here, and Tufts this year completes a three-year run as Hal, with the lead in Henry V. We look forward to what the future holds for Molina and Escalante.

Romeo and Juliet runs through Nov. 4 at the Angus Bowmer Theatre in Ashland.