The current season is one of change for the Oregon
Shakespeare Festival. OSF has appointed a new artistic
director, is piloting a new community-hosted experience, and
is offering a re-envisioned season calendar, all while recovering
from the profound impact of last summer’s wildfires and at
a time of deep political strain. But the more things change,
the more they stay the same, and what is unfailing at OSF is
a commitment to impactful and relevant Shakespeare. The
plays of Shakespeare continue to shed light on our collective
humanity, and it seems now is a great time for a reminder from
Shakespeare that “sweet are the uses of adversity.” (Duke Senior,
As You Like It).
At first glance the 2019 Shakespeare plays may not seem
thematically linked: In what ways could the romantic comedy
As You Like It, the “problem play” All’s Well That Ends Well, and
the wildly popular (if not quite the bloodiest) tragedy Macbeth
be connected? In these politically charged worlds, the loss of a
parent or child spurs the characters to action; each play makes
the personal political, delving into legacy, lineage, power and
the patriarchy. And all three plays comment on gender through
dynamic and determined female characters.
It is in As You Like It that the exiled Duke Senior speaks directly
of adversity as she and her band of followers brave the forest of
Arden. Director Rosa Joshi (Henry V, 2018) returns to direct what
she says is a play “about a search for our authentic selves.” While
sharing many comic motifs with A Midsummer Night’s Dream and
Twelfth Night—cross-dressing, separation, reunion, unrequited
devotion, love (romantic, fraternal, paternal), and the notion that
courtly behavior and identity can be cast aside in the natural
world—As You Like It stands apart from its fellows. As You Like
It juxtaposes courtly manners with rustic behavior. This culture
clash, if you will, forces characters to assume a new role, abandon
an old one and don a disguise or mask.
One of Shakespeare’s oft-repeated lines, “All the world’s a stage,”
is taken from As You Like It, reminding us that the play is exploring
the nature of performance. “We lose who we are, but we also
discover ourselves through that,” Joshi says.
Rosalind’s transformation, in particular, is what moves Joshi, who
describes directing As You Like It as “going into this story about
this young woman who feels trapped and is suffocating in the
patriarchal world. Someone who’s lost their immediate family—
in our version, has lost her mother to exile—who’s torn between
loyalties.” Rosalind “takes on a persona of a male, thinking it
will give her some power,” Joshi continues. “She becomes a man
because she’s seen that give people autonomy and power, and I’m
fascinated by that exploration.”
Upon leaving court, Rosalind and Celia rename themselves, with
Celia choosing “Aliena,” claiming that it is “something that hath a
reference to my state.” Not only will these women be foreign to the
Forest of Arden, they will be unknown to themselves; they will be
without the entitlements and the restrictions of women at court.
This state of being alien seems to align well with Jaques’s notion
that “all the people in their time play many parts,” and this state
of evolution leaves the door wide open for Joshi’s imagining
of Arden.
“It feels like a breath, that you take a breath,” Joshi says. “I
don’t think the story is that you go there and suddenly it’s all
different. It’s a journey. There’s a development that happens to
the characters in Arden. So, it’s not that the place completely
transforms them, it’s that the place allows them to find
themselves.” Joshi hopes this production “feels both timeless and
for our time” as she brings her own unique sense of ensemble
and play to Arden.
Director José Luis Valenzuela (Destiny of Desire, 2018) is staging
a visceral and dangerous Macbeth that he also describes as
“timeless,” believing “we can see ourselves where we are right
now” in the play. Valenzuela has a strong point of view about
the Macbeths, envisioning them as a couple without surviving
offspring, fueling an attempt “to kill all of those children of
families who may take over the kingdom—trying to destroy that
legacy, so those new generations will not be able to take over the
world that he finds himself in.”
Valenzuela sees the loss of the Macbeths’ own child as their
primary impetus for action in this play. “I’ll begin with the funeral
of Macbeth’s child,” he says, “to understand that he has no
legacy, to understand what they have lost. Part of that journey
that he’s taking, that they’re both taking, is because of the risks
that there is no more legacy there for them.”
Ambition is typically thought to be the primary issue in the
play. Given Valenzuela’s approach, it could be argued that Lady
Macbeth is the most ambitious, far
surpassing her husband and his desires
for advancement. What she desires is the
ability to behave male, have male power
and to not be hindered by the notions
of womanhood (political, physical and
emotional weakness).
Like Rosalind, Lady Macbeth feels
imposed limitations on her as a woman
and recognizes the agency that comes
with manhood. She rather blatantly
acknowledges this with a prayer of
invocation: “Come, you spirits / That tend
on mortal thoughts, unsex me here, / And
fill me from the crown to the toe topful /
Of direst cruelty!” Through this conjuring
of unknown supernatural powers, she
disavows her femininity, which she feels
has the obligation of not being cruel. This
ambition is about more than advancement of rank, title, class,
wealth or power. Lady Macbeth seeks a complete redefining of the
self, the implication being that by ridding herself of her female
sensibility, her masculine self will emerge. This will not only allow
her to be complicit in her husband’s exploits, but his equal and,
quite possibly, the better man.
Lady Macbeth’s ideas of masculinity are so clear that she
challenges Macbeth’s manhood, calling him a coward for shying
away from the thing he claims to want most. His reply, “I dare do
all that may become a man; / Who dares do more is none,” is met
with her assertion: “When you durst do it, then you were a man
/ And to be more than what you were, you would / Be so much
more the man.”
Lady M “dares do more” and believes that “to be more than what
you were,” is the end game. In their partnership, where he submits,
she drives on, admonishing him with “Infirm of purpose . . . My
hands are of your color but I shame / To wear a heart so white,”
not heeding Macbeth’s advice that a man knows his limits and
does not cross certain lines even at the height of ambition.
Valenzuela notes the delicious challenge this presents for
the actors. “I’m asking for lots of emotional insight into the
characters. It’s so complex, and emotionally difficult—she comes
in, and you love her, she’s your wife, and she takes away your
manhood.” And it’s important to Valenzuela that we go on
Macbeth’s journey, that we witness him “make the decision to
kill—he’s not a killer, he’s a hero, [that] is the antithesis of being
a killer.”
As with all Shakespeare comedies, All’s Well That Ends Well
concerns itself with the union of lovers in marriage. However,
director Tracy Young (A Wrinkle in Time, 2014) warns us that this is
a “complicated love story.” Not easily labeled a romantic comedy,
All’s Well That Ends Well defies genre and has been categorized
as one of Shakespeare’s problem plays. On the surface, Helen is
the definitive female character: moral, the picture of feminine
virtue and monogamous. This is quite the opposite of Bertram,
who is lewd and carnal. However, Helen
is not entirely without these urges, often
gendered, recognizing in herself the
struggle between chastity and lust.
It is not entirely certain if all really is
well. Maybe what has been perceived as
a “problem” is a strikingly contradictory
female character who breaks conventions
of gender. Is Helen virtuous or
manipulative? Can we even use such
distinctions to analyze her? It seems this
protagonist is a complex character. Young
reminds us that “she tricks him into getting
her pregnant . . . How dreadful! Why would
anyone do that?”
Young finds the play completely relatable,
however. “I think this is a very relatable
thing for a lot of people, especially a lot of
women, this question of why do we give our power away? Why
do we struggle so hard to validate ourselves and our strengths?
Why are we so conditioned to put someone else’s merits—to
project all this onto somebody else, and give them all of the
power to validate who we are?”
In her sexual pursuit, disguising herself to take Bertram as
her lover, Helen poses a threat to the social order. Her love for
Bertram leads to the “bed trick” that is central to the plot. “That’s
really interesting to me,” Young notes, “and it’s painful to witness
in the play. It’s not a feel-good situation. And, in fact, I think, as in
so much of Shakespeare, but particularly with this play, it’s quite
a modern sensibility.”
Helen’s bold pursuit of Bertram reveals that she is not concerned
with the fact that her love is unrequited. She possesses a sense
of entitlement that is rooted in her ideas of manhood, believing
that men are driven by sex and do not discern one woman from
another. “But O, strange men, / That can such sweet use make of
what they hate, / When saucy trusting of the cozened thoughts /
Defiles the pitchy night; so lust doth play / With what it loathes,
for that which is away.”
With the audience’s complicity, Helen exploits
Bertram’s weakness and wins him. This
hardly has to do with romantic love, and
even Bertram’s ultimate concession rests
on a wager. Near the play’s end, Helen must
still prove that she has, in fact, procured the
family ring and bears Bertram’s child.
“This play, in its complication, and I would
argue, intentional irony contained in that
title—this question of, this interrogation of
all’s well that ends well,” Young points out,
is a perfect rumination for our time.
Young speaks of the play as being
“then and now,” and that seems to be the
sentiment of both Joshi and Valenzuela as
well. All three productions seek to illuminate
our own time by using Shakespeare’s
words, themes and idiosyncratic characters.
Independent of one another, these directors
each spoke of patriarchy, of powerful
women, of finding, falling in or stoking the
flames of love. So while wildly different,
these Shakespeare plays, at OSF in 2019, will
no doubt be “our Shakespeare.”
Find tickets and information at As You Like It, All's Well That Ends Well and Macbeth.