Last week my husband and I journeyed to Ashland, Ore., a short 30-minute jaunt from our home here in Southern Oregon, to take in the first of our two scheduled outdoor performances of the summer at the award-winning Oregon Shakespeare Festival. The festival boasts three main performance spaces and, over the course of an eight-month season, presents 10 different plays in repertory, only four of which, this year, are works by Shakespeare. The rest include a Broadway musical, a world premiere and a presentation of The Odyssey.

The outdoor season at the oldest stage on the campus, the Allen Elizabethan Theatre, opened in early June and runs until mid-October. Coinciding with the outdoor performances is the Green Show, a host of free, varied acts which take the Courtyard Stage on The Bricks, a large, roughly triangular-shaped open space wedged between the Elizabethan and Bowmer theaters. The newly renovated space opened this June and features grass-carpeted terraces, connected by brick paving, which step down to the stage, offering perches for the audience. Originating decades ago, the Green Show initially featured demonstrations of Elizabethan dance and music, but now the performances run the gamut from ethnic dance troupes, jugglers and history lectures to jazz, blues and percussion concerts. Running 45 minutes to an hour and concluding about 30 minutes before the evening plays, they provide delightfully eclectic entertainment to anyone strolling by as well as a pleasant warm-up for the evening’s play-goers.

We arrived in town early, strolled around until tiny Taqueria Picaro caught our eye, and popped in for a light but satisfying dinner. We arrived at The Bricks in time to catch the last half of the evening’s presentation by the Oregon Cabaret Theatre, just a stone’s throw from the OSF campus. We were treated to previews of OCT’s season with some lively song-and-dance numbers. Then it was time to file into the theater, a recreation of The Globe, to enjoy The Merry Wives of Windsor.

The director chose to use “faithful anachronisms” in the play, pointing out that in Shakespeare’s time actors wore contemporary dress and sang and danced to the music of their day. So, in this production, there are visual references in the costumes and graphics to the 1980s and, most delightfully, in the generous incorporation of 1980s pop music. The opening scene found the entire company dancing and singing “Dance with Somebody,” and bits and pieces of lyrics and/or melodies from other songs (or choreography from iconic music videos) such as “Welcome to the Jungle,” “Thriller,” “I’m Never Gonna Dance Again,” “Whip It” and “One Way or Another” were sprinkled throughout and really added to the humor and liveliness of the play. I must also note the inspired performance of K.T. Vogt as Falstaff. Here, in a Shakespearean reversal, an enormously talented female actor plays a male character, and she pulls off Falstaff’s audacious bombast, lies and lechery with gusto. We enjoyed her earlier this year as the Nurse in Shakespeare in Love and last year in Yeoman of the Guard, and you can be sure we’ll be attending any play she’s featured in in the future.

We departed the theater three hours later, grinning from ear to ear and still humming some of those great ’80s tunes.

— Patty Vanikiotis, associate editor/copy editor