Category Archives: Theater

Bob Hicks, Dance, General, Theater

Pinter & OBT dance the night away

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Yuka Iino as the girl in the mirror in Niolo Fonte's "Petrouchka" at Oregon Ballet Theatre. Photo: Blaine Truitt Covert Blaine Truitt Covert/OBT

By Bob Hicks

Last weekend I went to two dances and a play. The dances were Petrouchka and No Man’s Land. The play was Carmen.

This was odd, because No Man’s Land, a sort-of-comic psychic tussle at Artists Repertory Theatre, is by the revered British playwright Harold Pinter, whose brand of rhythmically menacing theater has been rewarded with its own descriptor, “Pinteresque.” And Carmen, although most noted as a rousingly crowd-pleasing opera by Georges Bizet, was in this case a freshly choreographed ballet version, by Christopher Stowell, premiered at Oregon Ballet Theatre along with the premiere of choreographer Nicolo Fonte’s new Petrouchka, a ballet made famous in 1911 by the fortuitous teaming of the young choreographer Michel Fokine, the young composer Igor Stravinsky and the young star Vaslav Nijinsky for the slightly older  impresario Sergei Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes.

Tim True (background) and William Hurt in "No Man's Land" at Artists Repertory Theatre. Photo: Owen CareyStill. Of course No Man’s Land is a play, but in its distillation of psychological and philosophical themes and its virtual abandonment of plot, which seems to have been dropped unceremoniously through a trap door in the stage floor, it takes on the musically suggestive qualities of dance. And of course Carmen is a ballet. But as Bizet and his opera librettists, Henri Meilhac and Ludovic Havely, devised it (they were working from an earlier novella by Prosper Merimee, who in turn may have been working from a narrative poem by Alexander Pushkin) the story is indisputably theatrical, a twisting and exciting tale of action and big moments leading thrillingly to tragedy. Stowell chose to keep those elements — indeed, Bizet’s music almost demands it — creating an uncompromisingly theatrical ballet. Fonte, working with Stravinsky’s jagged and compellingly modern score and incorporating a good deal of Fokine’s original movement style, took an opposite approach, distilling almost to the point of pure dance Petrouchka‘s sad folk tale of a puppet who comes to life, falls in love, and is murdered. (It’s a tough fate: all Pinocchio got was a long nose and a short stint in a whale’s belly.)

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Bob Hicks, Books, Dance, General, Music, Theater, Visual Art

PDX weekend: embarrassment of riches

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  • 25 candles for First Thursday
  • BodyVox leans horizontally
  • William Hurt and Harold Pinter duke it out
  • Wordstock throws a bookapalooza
  • Oregon Arts Watch puts on a show (times three)
  • A double feature at Oregon Ballet Theatre
  • Portland Open Studios’ peek behind the scenes

By Bob Hicks

Good lord, what a weekend. Used to be, a person who really tried could actually keep up with significant cultural happenings in Puddletown. Kiss those days goodbye. Portland’s grown up (in a lot of ways, anyway) and we’ve entered pick-and-choose time. You’ll never catch everything worth catching, so pick what looks most intriguing to you and resign yourself to missing out on some good stuff. Even Don Juan can’t sample all the pleasures in the pantry.

A few ideas:

Tom Prochaska, "So Much To Do," oil on canvas, 66" x 88", 2011. Courtesy Froelick Gallery.Tom Prochaska, So Much To Do, Froelick Gallery

Tonight is First Thursday, the mainline Portland galleries’ monthly art hop, and it happens to be the 25th anniversary of the first art walk, in October 1986. Kelly House has this story in this morning’s Oregonian about how First Thursday and the Pearl District grew together, and I have this rundown (partial, as always), also in The Oregonian, of highlights of the October visual art scene. Personal tip: If you have business in Salem, or a free day for a short trip, the double-header of Italian Renaissance drawings from the Maggiori Collection and 22 prints from Georges Rouault’s Miserere et Guerre series at the Hallie Ford Museum of Art is well worth the visit.

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Bob Hicks, General, Theater

A black day in the Indian Territory

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By Bob Hicks

Over at Oregon Live, my friend Marty Hughley has been engaging in some unfair battle practices: He’s been using wit and logic against a slew of unarmed opponents.

The issue has been his story in The Oregonian about Portland Center Stage‘s new black-cast production of the Rodgers & Hammerstein musical Oklahoma! and the alternately angry and smirking comments by the story’s Web trolls that director Chris Coleman’s casting decision somehow encompasses all the accumulated sins of liberalism, racism, and probably godless commie-loving atheism to boot. Several have employed that oddly derisive phrase “reverse racism,” a designation that somehow reminds me of the reactionary right’s labeling as “class warfare” of poor and working class people’s attempts to shift a bit of the nation’s tax load back onto the wealthy, a fair share of whom have been busily divesting themselves of the concept of community responsibility for some time now. (It’s only fair and just to point out also that another good share of the wealthy are generous and committed to giving back to the communities that have helped them prosper.) Never mind that if we are in the middle of a class warfare, one side has sticks and stones and the other has heat-seeking missiles.

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Bob Hicks, General, Theater, Visual Art

Monday link: Carnage, clowns & prints

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From left: Trisha Miller, Patrick Dizney (background), Allison Tigard and Michael Mendelson in "God of Carnage" at Artists Rep. Photo: OWEN CAREY

By Bob Hicks

With PICA’s TBA new-arts fest, Music Fest NW and the kickoff of the regular fall arts season, it was a hectic weekend in Puddletown. So Marty Hughley, The Oregonian’s ace theater and dance guy, asked me to pitch in and review God of Carnage, Yasmina Reza‘s little free-for-all at Artists Rep. Not a bad assignment, all in all. Funny what a little playground punch between kids can turn into when the adults get involved. My brief print review is in this morning’s paper. You can read the more expansive online version at Oregon Live.

Barry Johnson has also filed his review at Oregon Arts Watch, and Willamette Week’s Ben Waterhouse shouldn’t be far behind: He was in the house on Saturday night.

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My old friend Bernie Weiner was a longtime theater critic for the San Francisco Chronicle, and, as the salesmen say in The Music Man, he knows the territory. So when he takes time out to send a tip, I pay attention.

This is what he sent the other day: not sure if you’ve ever seen dan hoyle perform (he’s geoff hoyle’s son), but he’s wonderful. just in case you’re interested, he’ll be doing his “real americans” show (based on conversations he had with ordinary americans, not all of whom were friendly) in portland 9/6-11-6.

The Real Americans also opened over the weekend, at Portland Center Stage. Rich Wattenberg’s review for The Oregonian is here.

I’d known this show was coming up and figured I’d catch it, but I didn’t know Dan Hoyle was Geoff Hoyle’s son. Geoff is a veteran physical-theater guy who’s maybe best-known for his stretches in Cirque du Soleil and as the original Zazu in the Broadway version of The Lion King. But I remember him best, and most fondly, as the clown Mister Sniff, one of the lynchpins with Bill Irwin of the funky and magnificent Pickle Family Circus, which both Bernie and I covered many years ago (Bernie more often, because the Pickles were part of the San Francisco home team). The splendor of Cirque du Soleil more or less killed popular interest in the Pickles, who were a quasi-hippie, quasi-touring European acrobatic troupe. But I absolutely loved the Pickles’ spirit, which was: be amazed by what’s right in front of your face. (Several Pickles, by the way, including Hoyle, Irwin, and fellow clown Larry Pisoni, played townsfolk in Robert Altman’s idiosyncratic movie version of Popeye.)

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Also from The Oregonian, I ran this review on Friday of Tamarind Touchstones, an exhibition of 61 lithographic prints made over the past half-century by the Tamarind Institute, which began in Los Angeles and moved in 1970 to Albuquerque. It’s a very good show, with work by people you know (Josef Albers, Roy De Forest, Kiki Smith, Louise Nevelson, Robert Colescott, Richard Diebenkorn, Jim Dine, Ed Ruscha) and probably a few you don’t. It’s in the prints and drawings galleries downstairs from the main entrance, and it’s worth your time.

David Hare, "Cronus Hermaphrodite," 1972. "Tamarind Touchstones" at Portland Art Museum
PHOTOS, from top:

  • From left: Trisha Miller, Patrick Dizney (background), Allison Tigard and Michael Mendelson in “God of Carnage” at Artists Rep. Photo: Owen Carey.
  • David Hare, “Cronus Hermaphrodite,” 1972. “Tamarind Touchstones” at Portland Art Museum. Courtesy Tamarind Institute.
Bob Hicks, Cities, General, Theater, Visual Art

O where, o where has our little blog gone?

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"Portrait of an Extraordinary Musical Dog," oil on canvas (presumed), by the British artist Philip Reinagle, R.A. Dated 1805. From the collection of the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts. Image courtesy of janeaustensworld blog.

By Bob Hicks

You out there, you poor wayfaring strangers stranded at the offramp of the Information Superhighway with a flat tire or a blown gasket or a speeding ticket from a Washington State Trooper who had his radar gun pointed the wrong way but also had a quota to fill and liked the looks of your out-of-state license plates …

Oh, wait. That’s us.

Months ago, in another cyber age, it seemed as if we were punching pithy posts onto this site with precipitous regularity, exploring the inner recesses of our odd obsessions and the outer recesses of the culture at large. And people visited. Like Elvis of Nashville and Jesus of Nazareth we even had “followers,” although we preferred to think of them as congenial partners in crime. Are any of you still here? Have you remained faithful, or at least hopeful? Or have we twittered your allegiance away?

Where has the summer gone, and why have we so adamantly exercised our right to remain silent?

Truth is, there’s been nothing adamant about it: It just sort of turned out that way. Life got hectic, kids were released from their school jail cells, travels beckoned, and our habit of recording our contemplations in this semi-public forum took it in the shorts. Don’t go away: We’ll try to do better from here on in.

To catch you up a bit, here are a few highlights of things we did and mostly didn’t write about.

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Bob Hicks, General, Theater

Shakespeare and the measure of virtue

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Angelo (René Millán) will have his way with Isabela (Stephanie Beatriz). Photo: David Cooper/Oreon Shakespeare FestivalDavid Cooper/OSF

By Bob Hicks

The central problem for modern audiences in Shakespeare’s “problem play” Measure for Measure is this: Why doesn’t Isabella just give up her virginity to save her brother’s life? Offensive and transgressive as it would be — what the power-abusing Angelo essentially proposes is mercy at the price of rape — how, in a world of situational ethics, is that a greater harm than allowing her brother to be executed when she could have saved his life? And why, subsidiarily, is Isabella then looked on as such a paragon of virtue that Vincentio, the wise and just Duke of Vienna, proposes at the end of the play to marry her himself? Is she not, by valuing mere chastity over a supposedly beloved brother’s life, the play’s true monster?

Problem, indeed.

I find the suggestion of an answer in The Embarrassment of Riches, Simon Schama’s lauded 1987 investigation of Dutch character and culture during that country’s Golden Age, which overlapped and carried beyond Shakespeare’s own Elizabethan/Jacobean times. Schama calls his opening chapter The Mystery of the Drowning Cell, and recounts the story of a system of punishment that may have been used often, or only rarely, or not at all: perhaps it was just a rumor to keep the citizens in line. Prisoners who were too lazy to work, according to several historical reports, were placed in a dank room in Amsterdam that was slowly flooded with water. Their choice was stark: get busy pumping the water out, or drown. Schama casts the story as a crucial metaphor for the Dutch dilemma of the landscape, a physical space that demands constant vigilance if its inhabitants are to keep from being inundated by the waters of the sea: “To be wet was to be captive, idle and poor. To be dry was to be free, industrious and comfortable. This was the lesson of the drowning cell.”

In other words: sometimes extremes mean more than they mean.

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Bob Hicks, General, Theater

J.C. & the Pirates: Ashland hits its stride

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Mark Antony (Danforth Comins) grieves for his dead Caesar (Vilma Silva). Photo: Jenny Graham.Jenny Graham/OSF

By Bob Hicks

Sunday was one of those days when Ashland repays all its debts and reminds you why you make the pilgrimage in the first place. The Scatters did a two-fer at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival: an enthralling Julius Caesar in the round at the compact New Theatre in the afternoon, a warm and comically capacious Pirates of Penzance on the outdoor Elizabethan Stage in the evening.

If you haven’t read or seen Julius Caesar since that unfortunate high-school freshman English class a few years back, take heart. Nothing didactic or dutiful here: this is storytelling at its most elemental and joyous. Director Amanda Dehnert’s production takes advantage of a lot of the bells and whistles that the festival’s prodigiously talented technical staff can muster, but the heart of the show is squarely in the acting and the script. It’s stripped-down theater, strategically rebuilt.

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Bob Hicks, General, Theater

Reign, reign, go away: it floods again

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Doll Tearsheet (Nell Geisslinger), Falstaff (Michael Winters) and a disguised Prince Hal (John Tufts) in "Henry IV, Part Two." Photo: T. Charles Erickson/Oregon Shakespeare FestivalT. Charles Erickson/OSF

By Bob Hicks

All right, now, enough is enough. Not to get all Bardic on your heads, but this truly seems to be the summer of the Oregon Shakespeare Festival‘s discontent.

Yesterday we told you about the storm that sapped the power all over the festival’s hometown of Ashland, and the emergency-tent performance that was thus wiped out, and we recounted the perils of the broken playhouse, which after six weeks of darkness thankfully will be whole again in another couple of weeks.

So now let’s catch up with last night and the Case of the Empty House. That would be, The Case of the Empty House Awash in Rain, except it wasn’t totally empty (Mr. Scatter exaggerates) and the rain, for all its annoyance, wasn’t exactly a gullywasher, although a fair share of the audience that did show up treated it like the Johnstown Flood.

The theater was the Elizabethan Stage, that grand open-air space that holds 1,200 people. The play was Henry IV, Part Two, the midplay in the Henry saga and in many ways the least stirring, yet a play that still has considerable charms. The audience was … sparse. I’ve seen a few light houses in the 30-plus years I’ve been coming to the festival, but for a Saturday night in July and a play that may not be one of the box-office boffos like Twelfth Night but is hardly Troilus and Cressida or Pericles, Prince of Tyre either, the wide swaths of empty seats were shocking.

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Bob Hicks, General, Theater

OSF beats the curse of the Scottish play

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"Love's Labor's Lost" at Oregon Shakespeare Festival, 2011. Photo: T. Charles Erickson/OSFT. Charles Erickson/OSF

By Bob Hicks

Mr. Noah, will this downpour never end?

The Scatters have disembarked in Ashland, Oregon, hometown of the Oregon Shakespeare Festival. Ashland is in the foothills of the Siskiyou Mountains, a prodigious distance from Mount Ararat, and also a fair trot from the creeping trees of Birnam Wood. Yet the festival must be wondering just whose curse has descended on it this summer, and when that wandering dove is going to return with the olive branch in its beak. As the puckish Marty Hughley commented, somebody down here must have actually uttered the title of The Scottish Play.

At about 7:15 on Friday evening, the lights went out in the little pink rental house where the Scatters are staying on the south end of town. Lights, clocks, fans, air-conditioner. Mr. Scatter ambled next door to see if anyone knew what was up.

“Excuse me,” he said. “Are your lights out?”

He was speaking to a smiling woman relaxing on a porch chair with her legs tucked beneath her. “Yeah,” she said. “The whole neighborhood’s hit.” She paused and gazed southwest. “Storm coming in from the coast,” she said. “Better just sit back and enjoy the show.”

By “show,” she didn’t mean The Imaginary Invalid. She meant the fireworks she hoped would soon be visible in the sky.

A little later the Scatters hopped into the Scattermobile and motored downtown toward the festival grounds. All the traffic lights were out. All the lights in all the houses and shops were out. The word “neighborhood” was beginning to take on a larger than usual meaning.

They approached the big white tent where they were going to see Moliere’s Invalid. Curtain time was approaching. Still no power. The Scatters began to get nervous. Had the Ashland curse bitten again?

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Bob Hicks, Dance, General, Journalism, Music, Theater, Visual Art

The first thing let’s do, let’s kill the critics

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By Bob Hicks

Bless me, reader, for I have sinned.

For 40 years Moses wandered in the wilderness. And for roughly the same amount of time I have stumbled through the landmines of contemporary culture, wearing the sackcloth of the most extreme form of penitent journalist.

Honore Daumier, "The Critic"I have been a critic.

Well, apparently I have. That’s what everyone tells me. Lord knows I’ve denied it over the years. For a long time, when people called me a critic, I’d correct them. “I’m a writer,” I’d gently explain, “and these days I happen to be writing about theater.”

It did no good. No one believed me. And “Writer Who Writes About Theater” doesn’t fit in a byline, anyway.

A few years ago I was chatting with Libby Appel, who at the time was artistic director of the Oregon Shakespeare Festival. “You know, I’ve never really thought of myself as a critic,” I told her.

Libby’s eyebrow arched. (Sometimes eyebrows actually do that.) “Oh, you’re a critic,” she said emphatically.

I like to think she was delivering a description, not an accusation. I like her and respect her, even though I’ve sometimes argued in print with shows she’s directed, and I think the feeling’s been mutual. Still. There was no question in her mind. I was, without doubt, One of Those People. And Those People occupy a curious position in the artistic firmament. “Critics never worry me unless they are right,” Noel Coward once commented. “But that does not often occur.”

Then again, what exactly is right?

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