Over the course of its 80-year history, the Oregon Shakespeare Festival has produced far more than various iterations of Shakespeare’s 37 plays. In fact, only three of this season’s 11 productions were penned by the great playwright, while the others include three world premieres and a couple of musicals. The OSF company is still committed to presenting the bard’s works, of course, and this year marks the beginning of Canon in a Decade, wherein all 37 Shakespearean plays will be performed within 10 years. However, our latest theater experience in nearby Ashland involved one of those world premieres. We thoroughly enjoyed a three-hour matinee performance recently of Fingersmith, an adaptation by Alexa Junge of a Sarah Waters 2002 novel which was a finalist for the Man Booker Prize. Having seen this play, I’m eager to explore some of Waters’ six novels. Set in Victorian England, the plot revolves around young Sue Trinder, a talented and ambitious pickpocket (or “fingersmith”) who is recruited to help a con man swindle a young heiress, Maud Lilly, out of her fortune. The story is told from Sue’s perspective in the first act, but, in a twist reminding me of the plot of Gone Girl, the second act pivots to Maud’s point of view, and the audience begins to understand it has been manipulated as skillfully as the characters in the play. More revelations and twists are presented in the third act, and woe to the viewer who fails to attend closely to the cons perpetrated by nearly every character upon every other character on stage. We left the theater still turning over the events of the play and continued to discuss it throughout dinner . . . and into the following days. The playwright’s words and the actors’ performances were powerful, but I’d also be remiss if I didn’t mention the clever staging and sets, which aptly represented both the gloomy slums of London and a mysterious country mansion. I would expect that Fingersmith, like other OSF world premiere productions, will go out and make a splash on many stages worldwide. If you get the opportunity in the future to see it, you should definitely do so. Better yet, come visit Southern Oregon this summer and see the original production! — Patty Vanikiotis, associate editor/copy editor