In September my husband and I took in our last show of the 2016 Oregon Shakespeare Festival season. The entire season runs from February through the end of October, with performances in the outdoor Elizabethan theater running May through September. As local residents, we take advantage of special ticket packages made available to us before each season begins and schedule a range of plays throughout the year. These include not only Shakespearean works but also musicals, modern classics, experimental theater and world premiere performances.

We began our evening at Standing Stone Brewing Company, just a few blocks from the Festival grounds in downtown Ashland, Ore. The brewery and restaurant have been broadly recognized as leaders in sustainable practices and restaurant energy conservation. Employees get a free bike if they agree to commute by bike to work at least 45 times annually, and nearly 40 participate in the program. Kitchen scraps and spent grain from brewing operations feed the livestock on the business’s nearby One Mile Farm, which provides meat, eggs and produce to the menu. All that, and Standing Stone makes a host of tasty brews and presents a substantial menu of great food served in a family-friendly, warm and welcoming atmosphere.

Well beyond standard pub fare, the menu offers wood-fired pizzas, homemade soups, salads (both side- and dinner-sized), burgers, sandwiches,  entrées and a kids’ menu. Sprinkled throughout are nonstandard items and specials like house-fermented kimchi and wood-fired Columbia River steelhead.  Beverage choices stretch from the expected in-house seasonal and year-round brews to house cocktails (featuring local distilleries); a reasonable wine list; and nonalcoholic options including assorted teas, ciders, organic juices, Standing Stone sodas and root beer.

Comfortably sated, we strolled to the evening’s performance of Hamlet. This cool evening found most of the patrons bundled up for the outdoor performance, but blankets for rent and hot drinks allowed into the auditorium kept everyone comfortable. The sets and costumes (in somber shades of gray and black and white) established a traditional interpretation, but director Lisa Peterson used guitarist Scott Kelly and his “doom metal” music on stage throughout to underscore the generational conflict inherent in the play and to express Hamlet’s grief, turmoil and pain. Reading about it in the program as I waited for the show to begin, I was concerned this aspect might overwhelm the performances or be too jarring, but it proved a worthy complement, much to my relief.

I found Danforth Comins’ Hamlet to be intelligent, anguished and compelling. An interesting casting had actress Christiana Clark playing Horatio. Aside from acknowledging that in the shift of a few pronouns, nothing in the costuming or staging called attention to the switch. I found this choice not at all jarring, and her performance perfectly embodied the strongest, truest relationship in Hamlet’s world.

With this season over, we’re already looking ahead to next season’s lineup of plays and plotting what we’d like to see. Check it out for yourself here, and consider a trip to Southern Oregon in 2017.

— Patty Vanikiotis, associate editor/copy editor