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Ashland, Oregon HOME Valley & State Sports Opinion/Editorial Classifieds Business Columnists Obituaries Weather Archive Revels Etcetera Backpage O-Zone Real Estate Guide Menu Guide Shakespeare Subscribe Contact Us Rate Card Place an Ad Roxane (Robin Goodrin Nordli, left) and her cousin Cyrano (Marco Barricelli) remember their youths together in 'Cyrano de Bergerac.'. T Charles Erickson | OSF June 17, 2006 By Robert H. Miller Tidings Correspondent The dominant theme in Shakespearean comedy is that of love — love in various aspects and forms, unrequited or requited, frustrated or fulfilled, mistaken or misjudged, competitive, crossed by mischance or magic, rivaled by the power and claims of friendship. ‘The Merry Wives of Windsor’ Shakespeare’s ever popular farce, is OSF’s eighth production of the play. Shakespeare supposedly wrote it at the behest of Queen Elizabeth I, who had become so enamored of Sir John Falstaff that she wanted more of him. More likely, it was commissioned by the Lord Chamberlain. Either way, Shakespeare came up with the goods. After all, in those times, heads would roll at the slightest provocation. The now impecunious Sir John gets wind that two respectable ladies, Mistress Page (Shona Tucker) and Mistress Ford (Tyler Layton), in the village of Windsor control the family purse strings, so he decides to woo them. John sends each woman a letter beginning, “Ask me no reason why I love you,” and ending, “By me, thine own true knight, by day or night, or any kind of light, with all his might for thee to fight. John Falstaff.” What Flastaff failed to consider was that the two women would share their identical letters and decide to teach “the greasy knight” a lesson. His comic comeuppance involves being dumped in a dirty linen basket and tossed into the Thames. Meanwhile, daughter Ann Page (Tiffany Adams) has a wealthy suitor, Abraham Slender (Shad Willingham), chosen by her parents; but he doesn’t suit her, because her heart is given to the personable Fenton (Yorke G. Fryer). Director Andrew Tsao’s note about the play reads as if he had had one too many an ale at the famed Garter Inn in Windsor. “Our most ingredient company of players, is eternally grapefruit for this opportunity to resent this fine play by our ever so bumble poet, Wm. Shakeschtick.” That seems to bespeak a wild entertainment. ‘The Two Gentlemen of Verona’ Shakespeare’s first romantic comedy is in it’s seventh production at OSF. “Two Gentlemen” has to do with the conflicting claims of love and friendship. One of the gentlemen, Proteus (Gregory Linington) is pledged to Julia (Miriam A. Laube), but when his best friend, Valentine (Juan Rivera LeBron) travels to Milan and falls in love with Silvia (Sarah Rutan), daughter of the Duke of Milan (William Langan), Proteus himself hies to Milan. He immediately also falls for Silvia and betrays both his friend and Julia, though he is unaware that Julia has donned male attire and is following his every activity. To help the story along, Shakespeare provides Valentine with a chaperone named Speed (Eileen DeSandre), and likewise Proteus with Launce (David Kelly) and his dog Crab (Terwilliger), “who has more personality than anyone else in the play except Launce himself,” to quote Harold Bloom. Has director Bill Rauch, who opens the play with a recitation of Shakespeare’s Sonnet 26, heeded Bloom’s suggestion that directors and actors do well to stage the play as a parody or travesty? He is certainly breaking new ground by turning Verona into Amish territory. For Milan, he explained, “we were motivated by the Elizabethan stage’s Tudor facade.” And a Brooks Brothers catalogue! The result is a world of manicured lawns and martinis, a world in which privilege might tempt two young visitors to compromise their values. Is this the country club? Tennis, anyone? ‘Cyrano de Bergerac’ “Cyrano de Bergerac,” written by Edmund Rostand, is a play about the young French poet, soldier, and philosopher who was badly wounded in the siege of Arras in 1641. Cyrano was a noble adventurer and a dazzling duelist, but above all, he had panache, symbolized by the sweeping white plume on his hat. But he also had a long obtrusive nose and felt that no woman would ever want to love him because of it. So, when he falls in love with Roxane, his beautiful cousin, he becomes the self-sacrificing lover, allowing his friend, the inarticulate Christian, who also loves Roxane, to use his love poems, speeches, and letters as his own. Christian dies in battle. What then? The play gains in poignancy from the modern translation by English novelist, Anthony Burgess (“A Clockwork Orange” ) who writes: “recognize very clearly the aesthetic faults of ‘Cyrano de Bergerac,’ the bald contrivances, the psychological implausibilities, the gross sentimentality of the ending — but I consider that the leading role is one of the great ones and that Cyrano has something not altogether superficial to say to an age trying to make a style out of despair.” What adds to the pleasure of this production is that it marks the return of Marco Barricelli to the play. For in OSF’s 1989 presentation in the Bowmer, under the direction of James Edmondson, Marco played Christian to the Cyrano of Henry Woronicz. Now, under Laird Williamson’s direction, he portrays Cyrano to Rex Young’s Christian, with Robin Goodrin Nordli cast as Roxane, the object of their affection. The play is in five acts that take the audience to a theater, a rotisserie, outside Roxane’s house, a post in the siege of Arras, and a convent garden. --> Copyright © 2006 Ashland Daily Tidings and Ottaway Newspapers. All Rights Reserved.