Perils of Caffeine in the Evening

We flew home from Medford yesterday, and I’m still sorting through my photos and thoughts of the past week.
Ashland has a nifty little park, Lithia Park, with a pleasant little creek crashing through it. The park itself is about a mile long, and beyond it you can hike up into Forest Service land and the town’s watershed. On the Fourth, we did about 8 miles roundtrip, hiking through the park, into the forest and back, arriving in time to get cleaned up for the evening presentation of King John. There was enough Sturm and Drang in the play that we never heard anything of the town’s fireworks display. I promise I’ll talk a bit about King John and the other plays in the next couple of days. Meanwhile, here’s a video depicting a kaleidoscope of sights and sounds Mrs. Perils and I encountered on our Independence Day jaunt. (It’s on Youtube):

Video! Click to play Sights & Sounds of the Fourth
My mom will stay with us here in Seattle until Tuesday, the weather’s terrific and I’m going to squire her around town a bit. Today, she and I parked down by the Pike Place Market, walked through it and down to the Washington state ferry dock. We caught a ferry to Winslow on Bainbridge Island just to sightsee. It was awfully pretty:

(Click to enlarge)

Mount Baker to the north…

…and Mount Rainier to the south.

Our son turned 25 last Saturday. We met up with him briefly Friday down here in Ashland. He’d come down here a few days before with some friends, and couldn’t tarry with us because he had to be back at work, or meet up with a girl, or some such parent-neglecting obligation.
He and I at some point were in a grocery store here, pondering over something, and a young woman walked by and raked her eyes across us - him with intent, me by unhappy accident - and he turned to me and said, “This place is out of control.” Nice try, kid. I admit to feeling a pang of both loss and pride at that moment. While it had been 20 years or so since I’d had that particular experience, I was filled with happiness for my kid. Although he feigned dismissiveness, I couldn’t have given him a better birthday present if I’d emptied my bank account.

Diary of Anne Frank
I had never read the diary nor have I seen a film or play based on it, although I knew the basic facts, so I’m not a very trustworthy commentator on this production. A quick history of the diarie(s):

• a version was published in English in 1952 which had been edited by Anne’s father Otto Frank. He had cut passages in order to protect the memory of others involved, and had also been advised to excise parts dealing with Anne’s emerging sexuality that the publishers felt would not be well-received by conservatives
• a play version by Frances Goodrich and Albert Hackett was produced in 1955, and a movie based on the play came out in 1959
• the veracity of the diaries was attacked by Holocaust deniers, and partially in response to this the unabridged diaries were published in 1995
• check here for more details

The play that we saw here in Ashland is a re-write done in the mid-90s by Wendy Kesselman. Many felt that the original play “bowdlerized” the diaries by keeping Anne a pre-pubescent, and removing most of the participants’ Jewishness in favor of a heartwarming story of a young girl. Paradoxically, this may have been the only way that the story could thrust memory of the Holocaust into the consciousness of an America obsessed with McCarthyism and post-war prosperity and, on those terms, it worked.
Kesselman was apparently contractually constrained to incorporate most of the original play’s language, but was able to add a Hanukkah celebration, some of Anne’s post-puberty feelings and some of the less-noble behavior and sentiments among the eight of them that holed up for 2 years together in very limited space. So, I’m not sure what we’re left with in the play. The playright, and the actors, are circumscribed both by the original diaries and by the 50s-era (mis)interpretations of them. What I take away, in the end, is a reminder of the monstrous social and political constructs that men are capable of promulgating and executing, and an enduring admiration for the writing talent and perseverence of the author of the diaries. It certainly trivializes any angst I might feel about not feeling inspired to do a blog entry. And, I’m drawn now to reading the diaries themselves. In fact, what touched me most about this Ashland production was when Anne’s father appeared at the end, revisiting The Annex after surviving the war. He held up the diary and said, “All that remains.” as Anne’s script is projected over the entire set.

Winter’s Tale
This is the third time I’ve seen The Winter’s Tale here at Ashland. There are some wonderful scenes in the play, especially in the second half.
The basic plot is:

• The king of Sicilia, Leontes, is entertaining his boyhood best friend, the king of Bohemia, Polixenes. Observing what everyone else deems innocuous wordplay between his wife, Hermione, and Polixenes, Leontes develops a precipitous and intense jealousy, and orders his closest retainer to poison Polixenes. The retainer, taken aback at Leontes’ distemper, warns Polixenes and they both flee Sicilia. Havoc ensues as Leontes accuses his queen of adultery, his son and only heir somehow dies, Hermione dies of some kind of apoplexy, he orders that his baby daughter, whom he suspects of being the issue of Hermione and Polixenes, be borne to a remote seashore and there abandoned. He is left alone, bitter, confused and bereft.
• Meanwhile, in Bohemia, a shepherd and his son come upon the (now) foundling daughter, and the shepherd adopts her (enticed by a wad of gold secreted in the bundle). Years later, Polixenes’ son is found to be visiting in the country with a shepherd’s daughter of unusually regal bearing. His father finds out, comes to the country in disguise to see what’s up, yadda yadda. You can read the details at Wikipedia.

The switch to the country scene, and the human scale it offers in contrast to the machinations of the court, is a homage or invocation of the pastoral commonplace celebrated memorably by Philip Sydney, and reminds me of the transition found in As You Like It when everyone cavorts off to the forest of Arden.
My problems with the play (as it’s written, not necessarily how it’s performed) have been:

• I’ve had trouble buying into the sudden jealousy of Leontes. This production, however, sold me, and I think it was due to a powerful performance by the actor playing Leontes. I was as riveted to the first half of this production as I was delighted by the second half.
• The statue scene at the end seems a little ghoulish, and definitely over-long. I’m not sure that, at the height of a reconciliation and celebration, I would choose to hie me and my guests off to a wax museum to visit the likeness of my ex.

I loved the sheep-shearing party in this production, as it incorporated a very affecting dance sequence.
Not sure I need to see this a fourth time for a while, but I’m glad I saw this one.

Four plays and three days have gone by. As usual, I’ve had work issues spring up that have siphoned off some free time, and we’ve been pretty busy. Here’s some tidbits:
Green Show
There are three theatres that the Ashland Shakespeare Festival uses - a large and a small indoor theatre, and the outdoor Elizabethan. They have 2 showtimes each day, one at 2:30 in the afternoon in each of the indoor theatres, and one at 8:30 in all three (it’s too warm in the afternoon for an outdoor performance).
Between the two shows, on a small greensward between the theatres, they present a Green Show, with a troupe of musicians and dancers, with a theme that is at least tangentially related to one of the evening plays. When we first started coming here, the Green Show was a little offhand, performed with acoustic period instruments accompanied by people (not dancers) promenading in period costumes.
The number of spectators grew so large, however, that they had a heartfelt debate about introducing amplification, and did so with some regret. Soon thereafter, they decided to put the whole enterprise on a more professional footing, designating a music director, a cohesive dance ensemble and choreography. Here’s a video clip of Saturday night’s show with an “early music” theme.

Four plays and three days have gone by. As usual, I’ve had work issues spring up that have siphoned off some free time, and we’ve been pretty busy. Here’s some tidbits:
Green Show
There are three theatres that the Ashland Shakespeare Festival uses - a large and a small indoor theatre, and the outdoor Elizabethan. They have 2 showtimes each day, one at 2:30 in the afternoon in each of the indoor theatres, and one at 8:30 in all three (it’s too warm in the afternoon for an outdoor performance).
Between the two shows, on a small greensward between the theatres, they present a Green Show, with a troupe of musicians and dancers, with a theme that is at least tangentially related to one of the evening plays. When we first started coming here, the Green Show was a little offhand, performed with acoustic period instruments accompanied by people (not dancers) promenading in period costumes.
The number of spectators grew so large, however, that they had a heartfelt debate about introducing amplification, and did so with some regret. Soon thereafter, they decided to put the whole enterprise on a more professional footing, designating a music director, a cohesive dance ensemble and choreography. Here’s a video clip of Saturday night’s show with an “early music” theme.

Friday AM June 30
We used to drive the 8 hours/500 miles from Seattle to Ashland, but the trip down I-5 isn’t particularly scenic once you’ve done it a couple of times, and it robs 2 whole days from a trip that always seems too short in the first place. The last 3 or 4 years, we’ve been flying instead. With increased security and a plane transfer in Portland, the door-to-door flight ends up taking 4 hours, but it’s not 4 hours of staring at oncoming pavement. The flight itself can be very scenic, too, going over Mt. St. Helens, Mt. Hood, the Columbia River, etc.
Checking through security at SeaTac, however, I believe I had my silliest experience with TSA. Mrs. Perils, and I with my arsenal of electronic devices, chargers and batteries, flew through the scanners. My mother, however, was detained for nearly 10 minutes while they ransacked her purse and ran it back through the scanner 3 times. Turned out she had 2 fingernail files secreted in its various pockets, and it took them a while to ID the second one. Why two? Was one for the left hand, one for the right? You have to wonder what’s to fear from a 90-pound, 76-year-old woman with a 3 inch fingernail file, but then you never saw her chase me through the house brandishing a hairbrush. Anyway, they passed her through in time to keep me from doing or saying something to get us all locked up.
If you’re doing short hops around the Northwest, you’ll almost always find yourself on a Horizon Airlines turboprop. The atmosphere is more relaxed and casual than on the main line airlines - you have to actually walk outside and climb up a set of stairs to the plane instead of using a jetway, and the crews are more colloquial and occasionally - gasp! - humorous in delivering their preflight spiels.
I was tickled to take my seat, look up the aisle into the cockpit and see this:

(Click to enlarge)

When we deplaned in Portland, the first officer set his bags on the tarmac:

You start to understand what it might be like to fly for a commuter airline. He, at least, got his luggage. Mrs. Perils’ bag ended up being routed to Spokane, and didn’t get delivered until Saturday morning.

My mom arrived at SeaTac yesterday to begin a 2-week siege visit. She was greeted by the hottest day of the year, with the temperature about 90, making me just a tick self-conscious about not having air conditioning in either my car or my house. It cooled off nicely in the evening, and I initiated the Camp Perils of Caffeine Fitness regimen, marching her down the hill to Greenlake and (!) back up to our house. The poor woman lives in northwest Ohio, where it’s so flat that we used to complain on bike rides when we had to shift to use an overpass over a freeway, and I could sense her feelings of hopelessness as we walked back up, where each block seemed to get steeper. She’s a better person today for the experience.
On Friday morning, we (Mom, Mrs. Perils and I) will fly down to Medford, Oregon and spend next week in Ashland watching plays, hiking in the Siskiyous and generally being goddamn tourists. We’ll be seeing:

• Winter’s Tale
• Diary of Anne Frank
• Bus Stop
• The Importance of Being Earnest
• King John
• Intimate Apparel
• Merry Wives of Windsor
• Cyrano de Bergerac

This will be, I believe, our 13th annual pilgrimage to the Ashland festival. We started by tagging along with a group from our son’s middle school, continued with them through high school, and bought our own membership after he graduated. Check out the link at the left that tracks our 2004 trip.
I was surprised about a month ago to start seeing referrals to this blog from Wikipedia. It turns out that my entry on the 2004 presentation of The Visit is referenced in the Wikipedia entry about the play. And, no, I didn’t write the entry, and don’t know who did! So, I’m spurred to more assiduous about my reflections on this year’s trip than I was last year. And, as always, I’ll put up any good photos.