OSF's Pericles

Shakespeare's Pericles is a heartwarming story of a healed relationship between a father and his family that seems to parallel the author's own angst over his strained relationship with his family.

Written by Shakespeare while living and working in London, while his daughters lived in Stratford-upon-Avon, Pericles is the story of a father separated from his family by the pressures of his job as king of Tyre and the unfeeling tides of the universe. Pericles is written as an empathetic character, and the Oregon Shakespeare Festival's current production taps into that core quality of the script.

Pericles (Wayne T. Carr) meets his wife, Thaisa (Brooke Parks), while on the run from the villainous Antiochus (Scott Ripley). The pair have a daughter, Marina (Jennie Greenberry), while at sea, only to be separated by shipwreck. The three end up in different cities, but the story follows Marina and her salvation of Mytilene from the vice of lust through her unprecedented chastity. The play ends with the family's reunion at the hands of the goddess Diana (Emily Serdahl).

OSF's Pericles is a compelling piece because director Joseph Haj embraces the fairy tale qualities of the script, allowing Shakespeare's fantasy of a happy reunion with his family to play as such. It allows us to believe the happy end the way we might believe the happy end in any fairy tale: we don't necessarily believe the events of the, but we believe its sentiment. We believe that the Big Bad Wolf gets his just desserts and celebrate Little Red Riding Hood's victory. We are disappointed in the princess's mistreatment of the frog, and celebrate her reward upon behaving correctly. We hope that Pericles, Thaisa and Marina will be all right in the end, and cry just a little bit when they are. Pericles is a fairy tale, and Shakespeare's telling is the most famous one for us in our time, just like the Grimm brother's "Little Red Riding Hood" is the most famous telling of that tale. Shakespeare's Pericles is not an anonymous telling, however, who's author is shrouded behind the curtains of tradition and intermediary anthropologists. Shakespeare is very present in his Pericles, with Pericles' separation from his wife and daughter paralleling Shakespeare's own alienation from his family. That Pericles is most engaging once that central problem begins in the third act speaks to Shakespeare's Pericles' strength lying in the protagonist's role as an authorial proxy: since Shakespeare seems to have identified with Pericles in his struggle for reunion with his family, it's easiest for the audience to identify with Pericles there, too.

The lesson here is for playwrights to write not just what they know, but what they've experienced. The first two acts of Pericles are compelling only by OSF's stagecraft: the play speaks for itself when the protagonist's struggle parallels the author's own experience.

Clowning at The Cocoanuts

http://osfashland.org/productions/2014-plays/the-cocoanuts.aspx

Oregon Shakespeare Festival's The Cocoanuts demonstrates, paradoxically, the limitations imposed upon the text both by the Marx Brothers' use of film as a medium, and by OSF's use of stage.

The Cocoanuts was originally a Broadway musical written for the Brothers by Irving Berlin and George S. Kaufman (and it's adapted here by Mark Bedard). The Marx Brothers came up in vaudeville, with audience interaction as part of their act. Breaking the fourth wall translates from smaller comedy stages to the big Broadway ones, but doesn't to film. At the same time, Berlin and Kaufman wrote this play for the Marx's clown characters, which limits OSF's clowns (Eduardo Placer, Mark Bedard, Bret Hinkley and John Tufts) with impersonating somebody else's lazzi.

Placer plays Robert Jamison/Zeppo, an aspiring architect making ends meet at the Cocoanuts Hotel while wooing the well-off Polly Potter (Jennie Greenberry). But her staid rich mother, Mrs. Potter (K. T. Vogt) will none of it - she wants Polly to marry the likewise-moneyed Harvey Yates (Robert Vincent Frank). Fortunately for Robert, he's got his employer Mr. Hammer/Groucho (Bedard) in his corner. Oh, Hammer won't pay him his back wages - smart-ass puns instead of amenities do not a solvent hotelier make. But, assisted by Chico and Harpo (Tufts and Hinkley), Hammer instills just enough anarchy to dissolve social distinctions and help this bright-eyed idealist marry the girl of his dreams.

That anarchy includes improvising with the audience, which injects a certain unpredictability that changes the show night to night. What doesn't change are the lazzi, or stock business, of the clowns with the exception of Placer's Zeppo. In the movies, Zeppo Marx is always the straight-man, quite uninteresting compared to his vibrant elder brothers. That blandness gives Placer an opportunity to expand his character's repertoire; a luxury the other three clowns don't have in their responsibility to American comic iconography. This paradox teaches two important lessons about clowning: first, it belongs on stage. Comedy, as a tool of subversion and anarchy, thrives on the unpredictability of direct interaction with the audience. But even semi-rigid texts like Bedard's adaptation of Berlin and Kaufman, not to mention the iconographic legacy of Groucho, Chico and Harpo, limits the anarchy.

The paradox is that the stage allows freedom from the fourth wall, but theatrical conventions of textual supremacy and loyalty to the classics limit that freedom. That's not to say this play isn't good: it's great. The Marx Brothers, even in impersonation, work far better on stage than on screen. That said, Marx Brothers texts are limited by Marx Brothers films in that the films sustain their iconographic lazzi. A better choice might have been creating a full-fledged piece of commedia dell'arte: it would free the clowns from the text while retaining Oregon Shakespeare Festival's classical roots.