“No Women’s Matters”? Oregon Shakespeare Festival 2020

The 2020 season at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival opened only briefly before the lockdown forced its closure, but it included two excellent productions of plays by Shakespeare. One would have delighted audiences; the other would have dazzled them. 

I confess that when this season was announced, A Midsummer Night’s Dream was not the production which most caught my eye, or set my pulse racing. I’ve seen the play many times, including the OSF productions in 2008 and 2013, and I simply couldn’t imagine where a new version of this play might go. I doubt if I was alone in that reaction. 

I was wrong. The 2020 production in the Angus Bowmer Theatre was a delight from beginning to end: two and a half hours of sheer enchantment. Part of that charm came from its simplicity and the clarity of its story-telling. There were no complex changes of set (shifts in lighting take us from one location to another and from day to night), and all the cast demonstrated an exceptional ability in handling the language of the play.  

From the time Royer Bockus took to the stage with an introductory song – part of a framing device, the details of which I won’t reveal, but one which would move to tears even the most flint-hearted members of the audience – it was clear that this…