Passport2 Southern Oregon Blog

The premise of Julia Cho’s play “The Language Archive” concerns a linguist who can’t communicate.  The problem with the play is that no one else can, either–which means that not only can’t they connect with each other, but they can’t connect with the audience, and so their struggles inspire more frustration than sympathy. The opening [...]

When a play relies on a narrator, it makes me feel like the playwright took the easy way out. In OSF’s 2011 production of “To Kill a Mockingbird,” the central character is the adult Jean Louise (“Scout”) Finch, played by Dee Maaske, who watches and narrates as her memories from her childhood are acted out. [...]

When I started writing play reviews for the Passport2Ashland blog last year, it seemed like a perfect fit. By day I study theatre at SOU, and by night I work as a hotel clerk at the Stratford Inn, where I get to interact with guests from all over the world, most of them in town [...]

In honor of the new theatre season at SOU, which features King Lear and Alice Through the Looking Glass, I wanted to take a minute to look back on last term’s fantastic production of “A Streetcar Named Desire.” “Streetcar” is so well-known, so frequently parodied for its larger-than-life characters with their outsized emotions, that it [...]

“Taking Steps,” a farce by Alan Ayckbourn that served as the lighter half of Southern Oregon University’s fall theatre lineup, was a marvelous showcase for its student actors, who lit up the stage under Dennis Smith’s excellent direction. Ostensibly about a marriage that may or may not be breaking up and a house that may [...]

Now that the 2010 season of the Oregon Shakespeare Festival has drawn to a close, I’ve been reflecting back on its highlights. For me, the two standouts were actually polar opposites of each other–the raw, devastating “Ruined” and the sweet confection that was “She Loves Me.” An intimate, lovely musical with a gorgeous Art Nouveau [...]

There’s a lot to love about Throne of Blood. Every element of its presentation is spectacular: the use of video to both create ambiance and comment on the action; the creepy, searing, soundscape; and the dramatic, evocative lighting design. In particular, the hyper-stylized, beautifully over-the-top costumes are easily worth the cost of admission by themselves, [...]

I wouldn’t blame anyone who was reluctant to see “Ruined.” Given its subject matter–how rape is used as a tool of war in the ongoing civil war in the Congo–it was tempting to sit this one out and see something lighter instead. But to do so would have meant depriving myself of one of the [...]

My general apathy toward Jane Austen is something I usually keep secret, for fear of being asked to turn in my ovaries.  Both the beloved BBC adaptation of “Pride and Prejudice” with Colin Firth and the more recent movie version with Keira Knightley left me cold.  But this time around, in OSF’s lively and delightful [...]

Playwright Lisa Kron’s Well takes on so many issues–health, family, race, theater itself–that one wonders how they will all come together at the end, and the answer, unfortunately, is that they do not.  The playgoers I’ve spoken with are mostly firmly divided on whether they liked it or not, with some loving it and others [...]