Ashland, July 3, 2014
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| Oregon Capitol |
We arrived at the Winchester Inn in Ashland late yesterday afternoon after a full day of driving to find our friends Jane, Peter, Ed, and Geegee, soon to be joined by Derrick and Tami, all set for five days of plays. The trip down the spine of Oregon between the mountain ranges is gorgeous.
We started quite early out of Portland and headed for the State Capitol in Salem, expecting, correctly to find very suitable coffee nearby. It’s quite amazing how Capitol buildings attract caffeine addicts! Oregon’s Capitol building in Salem is quite unlike most others in the US. It’s art deco, built in the 1930s and has a shimmering statue of a pioneer atop its central cylindrical hall. What is most amazing stepping out of the car near the building is the intense aroma of roses; the bouquet of the place is phenomenal. The older varieties, brilliant in their colors, produce a scent that wafts through the air hundreds of feet to bring a smile to your face.
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| Roses Scent Everywhere |
We had a walk around the entrance, saw the central rotunda then headed off to a reborn funeral home, the Ike Box coffee shop for our morning coffee. When Ben explained to the barrista what he wanted, he got a response of “That’s just how I had my coffee until I stopped drinking milk!” Ben found a kindred spirit.
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| Capitol Rotunda |
We sipped as we drove south through the Willamette Valley heading past Eugene, listening to baroque music from the local station, into the ranges that slow down I-5 as it winds south to the California border.
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| Ike's Box Coffee Shop, Salem |
Getting peckish, we noticed a sign at Oakland with a knife and fork and headed into the old railroad village to find Tolly’s, a grocery store gone antique shop that now is a restaurant. With the strong Oregon accents of “you bet!” and huge sandwiches, we sat amongst 20th century antiques, wondering about the taste of our parents’ generation. Let’s face it, the 20th century produced some wonderful things but the average household seemed to collect a lot of tchochkes! And now we buy them as antiques. Nevertheless, the barley lentil soup Ben had was fine, and John’s veggie sandwich was excellent, on swirled black and white bread. Ben taught a willing barrista how to make his textured cappuccino and the barrista charged him only $2.00 thanking him for the lesson at the Oakland Coffee Shop around the corner.
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| Winchester Inn |
Off to Ashland
John had thought that Ashland, home of the Shakespeare Festival, would be quite alpine. It isn’t. Being quite close to the California border, and inland from the sea, it has the same air of central California—golden hills, and greenery only where it’s watered. It’s very pretty, but not alpine.
The Winchester Inn is a lovely old collection of Victorian homes, gathered together on a hilly street up from the main street, with a superb restaurant, the Alchemy. We dined there early last night before the theater on quail, stuffed with sausage for John and potato and sweet red pepper bisque, with Dungeness crab salad for Ben. Ben chose a lovely local Willamette Valley 2011 pinot noir from the Penner Ash winery.
The Inn is about two blocks from the collection of theaters that provide a home for the festival—it’s really not a festival, since it lasts most of the year and produces 11 plays every year with a predominantly repertoire cast.
The festival incubated the play “All the Way” and premiered it last season before it went on to American Conservatory Theatre in Cambridge, MA and then to Broadway where it won the Tony for Best Play this past June. The second play, “The Great Society” by the same playwright, John Schenkkan, is opening here later in the month.
The first show of the seven we will see was the Irving Berlin-George Kaufman, Marx Brothers play “The Cocoanuts.” It’s a hilarious slapstick Marx Brothers comedy, with Groucho played by local actor Mark Bedard! It’s a scream. We roared with laughter at the antics of actors as they moved through the farce, coupled with the music of Berlin, including “I’ll be loving you always.”
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