The Oregon Shakespeare Festival 2018 Review

Change is afoot at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival—climate change not least. With the increasing heat and attendant increased wildfires in Oregon, poor air quality has forced the cancellation of more performances in the outdoor Allen Elizabethan Theatre than ever. That includes the performance of Romeo and Juliet that I was scheduled to see, and which will thus be covered in a separate review. It is a reminder that the Festival stands on somewhat uncertain ground in many respects as artistic director Bill Rauch oversees his penultimate season and Executive Director Cynthia Rider announced in October 2018 that she is leaving. By this time next year, someone new will be preparing to take the reins, including continuing the current team’s efforts to negotiate those fires. It seems only fitting, then, that this season’s Shakespeare offerings are all concerned with the new, with encounters between unfamiliar groups, with the question of how we as people shape and change each other—for good and bad.

Love’s Labor’s Lost

Love’s Labor’s Lost begins with a change of rules—or, in the case of Amanda Dehnert’s production in the Allen Elizabethan Theatre, it began with a song. Eleven original songs, composed by Dehnert and Andre J. Pluess, studded the scene transitions of this production, lyrics sometimes in the voice of the characters and other times with the band (who introduced themselves, in what is perhaps a hint of foreshadowing, as “The Designated Mourners”) acting as a kind of choral commentary. Dehnert and Pluess’s tunes were fun…