Ashland, Oregon, Sunday, July 7, 2019—A busy few days for us, with two plays each day and a lovely dinner and good wines each night. Just as an aside, the weather has been perfect. Unlike the 100F degree days we have met for the past few years, the weather has been clear, bright, breezy and cool for this part of the world. Day to day highs have been in the 80s (high 20sC) and cool enough for quilts at night, dropping to about 50F (10C).
Thursday, July 4—After the parade, we had a matinee of Paula Vogel’s Indecent. It is about a Yiddish play, God of Vengeance, written by a Polish Jew, Solomon Asch in 1906. Vogel discovered a manuscript by chance at a university library where she was teaching and researched its production history. It is story about a “religious” Jewish man who runs a brothel on the first floor of his house and lives with his wife and daughter on the second floor. His daughter Manke falls in love with Esther, one of the downstair prostitutes. The play was successfully produced in many European cities without incident until it reached New York in 1920. There, it was shut down and the cast and producers were arrested on obscenity charges. The censorious voices included Jews (one being the rabbi of the large Reform Temple Emanuel). Ben attended the post-production discussion with Rebecca S’Manga Frank who played Manke. He found out that the cast here is entirely Jewish and that Frank is “Bluish”—a Black Jew.
For dinner, our hosts Ed and Geegee chose Liquid Assets, a new restaurant. They bought the wines at the bottle shop at the entrance to the restaurant and then brought them to our table—an Oregon cabernet franc, a merlot and a cabernet sauvignon, all of which had both good bouquets and good bodies and went with our choices for meals. We preferred the cabernet franc. We started the meal with olives, truffled popcorn, then moving on for John a bowl of poutine followed by a spinach salad. Ben began with roasted brussels sprouts with bacon and a veggie burger, which was extremely good, and lived up to its beefy cousin.
Thursday night’s play was a fine version of the comedy As You Like It. The first act was confusing and difficult but was redeemed by the second act which ends with: “All the world’s a stage….”
Friday July 5—Part of the visits that we always enjoy is a chance to meet with cast members over coffee or lunch. This time, Rosalind from As You Like It joined us at the Larks Restaurant. Jessica Ko who is now her third season here was witty, charming and full of insight into playing various roles in the shows. The actors generally have roles in two plays each year, often performing one in the morning and another play in the evening. She is a graduate of Brown’s MA Theater Program, established by well known playwright Paula Vogel and the director of Providence’s Trinity Theater. Ben had a a cream soup and salad, while John had a huge chopped roasted lamb wrap.
Friday afternoon we saw a different type of Shakespeare, La Commedia of Errors, in both English and Spanish and set in the present time of separating, detaining and deporting by ICE particularly Latin Americans. In the show the issue is deporting from the US one of each of two sets of twins who by accident were separated at birth and raised on either side of the US-Mexico border, of course unaware of their siblings, per the original Comedy of Errors. The play was performed in a rehearsal space, and we learned that, as community outreach, it is often performed in schools in southern Oregon. Given the current border issues including Dreamers, it’s a timely piece particularly for he West Coast with its significant Mexican-latino population.
On Friday night we hosted dinner at Peerless Hotel, one of our favorite places, eating under the apple tree on the lawn, with excellent St. Innocent Freedom Hill Willamette pinot noir and Irvine Roberts Rogue Valley chardonnay. John started with Korean style mushroom steamed buns followed by curried vegetables with skewered shrimp, and while Ben enjoyed a chilled fruit and vegetable soup and an ahi poke bowl.
That night we thoroughly enjoyed a more traditional program of All’s Well That Ends Well which was terrifically funny but nuanced. The women win in he battle of the sexes although the men are not truly defeated.
Saturday, July 6—After our regular breakfast, Ben headed off to have coffee with two of the witches from MacBeth, in the form of an interview: Miriam Laube interviewing Erica Sullivan. John felt in need of some free time, and then ventured into the local pub, Sam’s, for a meat pie. They do not serve Lancashire style pork pies but their beef variety was OK, though it had gravy rather than jelly inside the crust.
In the afternoon we were part of the white audience for the dark comedy Between Two Knees about the lives of an indian family whose members had survived the 1890 Wounded Knee massacre and the 1973 Wounded Knee occupation. This is a hilariously funny tragi-comedy written and acted by a “Native American” comedy troupe about the horrors faced by the native Americans of the Plains and how they have interacted or been forced to interact with white so-called civilization that saw them as savages. The white people in the audience are, of course, “others’ and told so in the hilarious first lines which more or less advise you to flee if this makes you uncomfortable.
We had dinner at another new restaurant, the Cucina Biazzi, hosted by David and Andy. It's an alfresco traditional Italian restaurant where we enjoyed a starter antipasto, then pasta where John looked to the sage and marscapone ravioli and Ben to creamy risotto with artichokes. Following, we both had gambaretto.
The evening play was MacBeth, in all its beheading glory and blood. It was powerful, clearly showing that the lust to obtain and keep power leads to complete and utter tragedy.
This morning our group arose early to watch the US women’s soccer team beat the Dutch team in Paris. Tonight it’s Alice in WonderlandI, after dinner at Amuse.
