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OSF play makes Time's top-10 list By BILL VARBLE The Oregon Shakespeare Festival's Washington, D.C. production of "The Magic Fire," by Lillian Garrett-Groag, made Time magazine's top 10 list of theater picks for 1998. Time reporter Richard Zoglin in his year-ending theater wrap-up said the OSF production "combines warm family comedy and savvy political melodrama with rare skill." "The Magic Fire," directed by OSF Artistic Director Libby Appel, finished a five-week run Dec. 6 at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. "The Magic Fire" joins such productions as Tennessee Willliams' "Not About Nightingales" and Martin McDonough's "The Queen of Leenane" on the Time list. OSF Media Relations Manager Amy Richard said just getting a production seen by East Coast critics and public was an achievement. "By taking our show to the Center, the quality of our productions was out there," Richard said. "It's difficult to get folks from the East Coast over the Rockies. We think this will help show who we are and what we do." Commissioned by the Festival in 1994, the play was presented in Ashland as a reading in 1995. The OSF and Garrett-Groag then won grants to develop the production from the Kennedy Center's Fund for New American Plays. The play was performed at the Festival's Angus Bowmer Theatre in Ashland in the 1997 season. Kennedy Center director Max Woodword saw the opening and called OSF about bringing it to Washington. Appel said she and Garrett-Groag made a few changes in the play before taking it East. She said the actors seemed to find new depths in the characters and the story. "The Magic Fire" is a comedy with a serious agenda. It tells the story of a middle-class refugee family in Argentina several years after the end of World War II. Family members think they've left Fascism behind in the Europe of the 1940s, but they find worrisome echoes in Peron's Argentina. Great music and a love of opera are woven through the production. The OSF statement said a Kennedy vice president told them the opening of "The Magic Fire" was the best they'd ever had for a new play. The Washington audience -- reputedly a tough creature -- gave the opening a standing ovation. OSF Executive Director Paul Nicholson said the Festival is already talking with the Kennedy Center about the possibility of another play there. Mail Tribune Copyright � The Mail Tribune 1998, Medford, Oregon USA