2025 Oregon Shakespeare Festival

2025 Oregon Shakespeare Festival 

Ashland, Oregon  

Jun 12-14 and Jul 16-18, 2025.  

Reviewed by Lindsey Mantoan 

Since the COVID pandemic shut down the 2020 Oregon Shakespeare Festival (OSF) season, the festival has been plagued with challenges including nearby fires smoking out shows, controversial leadership changes, and audiences reticent to embrace non-Shakespeare offerings. Seasons have been smaller in scope, and my experience seeing every show since 2020 is that houses were often half-full. So, it was thrilling to see full houses for every performance I attended, for a season of nine productions. In the first season fully programmed by new artistic director Tim Bond, the 2025 year featured three Shakespeare plays, a musical, a classic comedy of manners, two new adaptations of canonical texts, an August Wilson century cycle play, and a recent Pulitzer Prize-winner. The sense that this was a return to the vibrant pre-pandemic OSF reverberated through the slate of programing, audience enthusiasm, and discernible joy from the artists. The Oregon Shakespeare Festival is back.  

It seemed to me that no one had more fun on the OSF stage this year than Royer Bockus and Amy Kim Waschke, who played the eponymous wives in Shakespeare’s comedy The Merry Wives of Windsor. This production, in the outdoor Elizabethan theatre, was affirming, joyous, queer, racially diverse, and playful. Director Terri McMahon innovatively revised the script, transforming Fenton into a nonbinary character that others referred to with they/them pronouns; the character was played by nonbinary actor Ellen Soraya Nikbakht. The fact that Fenton married the much-fought-over Anne, and the entire ensemble celebrated them as they kissed in the final tableau, foregrounded gender diversity and queer joy. Slender was queer-coded, and Doctor Caius was overjoyed when he discovered that the “bride” he’d tried to marry was not Anne but, in fact, Corporal Nym—the two seemed likely to live happily ever after together. These production choices demonstrated OSF’s continued commitment to reenvisioning classic theatre for marginalized populations. Susan Tsu’s clever costume design gave Falstaff a codpiece that became its own character, and, in the finale, a white unitard with “big daddy” on the belly, a British flag vest over it, and antlers on his head. His followers, a biker gang with leather jackets, bandanas, chain necklaces, and spiked hair, danced during scene changes to techno-house music. The intimacy and camaraderie of the wives as they plotted, drank White Claw, and high-fived each other centered female friendship and comedy in a way that felt like an antidote to the sidelining of female characters in many Shakespeare plays—especially Julius Caesar, which played next door this season. The production concluded with the company dancing and singing, and an invitation for the eager audience to join them.  

When I approached the Thomas Theater to see 2022 Pulitzer prize-winner Fat Ham, by James Ijames, I was met with a half-dozen people waiting outside trying to get tickets. The show had been sold out for weeks, a contrast to OSF’s recent struggles with audiences. The set, featuring the façade of a back porch, a picnic table, a grill, a floor covered in grass, and eatable potato salad, put all of us in Juicy’s backyard as he negotiated his “softness,” the ghost of his father, the misogyny and homophobia of his stepfather, and the yearning of his childhood friend, Larry. Played with heart and strength by Marshall W. Mabry IV, Juicy strutted about the backyard with confidence, even while he questioned his next steps when his brutal father summoned him to perpetuate cycles of violence. During a tour-de-force karaoke performance of “Creep” by Lynnette R. Freeman as Tedra, each character was given a spotlight to physicalize their internal angst. When Larry transformed from his military uniform into full-on drag, the steps to the back porch of the set moved forward toward the center audience, expanding to become a runway, complete with lights embedded in the floor. Larry’s catwalk would make a splash on Drag Race, and all the characters took a moment to shine on the runway. Basking in the affirming ending in which mothers accepted their queer children, audiences in the predominantly-white space of Ashland witnessed vital Black queer joy and the affirmation that comes with familial acceptance.  

In the Angus Bowmer Theater, the larger of the two indoor spaces, Jitney featured veteran OSF actors such as Kevin Kenerly and Tyrone Wilson alongside OSF newcomers who brought August Wilson’s world to life with authority and intention. Under the nuanced direction of Tim Bond, this production offered strong ensemble interplay and studied dialect work. The interior of Becker’s car service, fully realized with a distressed couch, practical lamps, and a phone that rang every few minutes with a jitney customer, was situated in front of a street on a hill, complete with actual car. As part of the same season, Jitney and Fat Ham staged a profound conversation about Black masculinity and sexuality, particularly since a few actors featured in both productions. The casting of Aldo Billingslea as Rev in Fat Ham and Doub in Jitney highlighted this intertextual conversation, as one body put forward totalitarian views of family and sexuality in one play and a gentle acceptance of everyone in the other. During a summer of rising unemployment for younger Americans, the targeting of educational opportunities for minority students, and deepening racial division, Jitney spoke to this moment by centering community and resilience.  

In As You Like It, director Lisa Peterson took an intimate approach to Shakespearean comedy, placing actors in the aisles of the modular Thomas Theater to interact with the audience. Bold, stylized visuals, including all-white costumes, separated the sterile, authoritarian court of Duke Frederick and the vibrant, verdant world of the commune of banished Duke Senior in the forest of Arden. In this highly musical production, most ensemble members played instruments. Guitar chords were punctuated with musical jokes via tuba, slide whistle, accordion, and harmonica. The production featured a 1960s hippie aesthetic—complete with bare feet, knit fruit, crocheted vests, and flowers in long hair—that both reveled in and mocked itself. Peterson drew inspiration from generational differences that feature prominently in cultural narratives about this period, although more salient to me was the distinction between built worlds and natural, the latter fostering love and connection. A woolly sheep, marionetted by Kate Wisniewski as Corin, trotted from grass patch to flower, nibbling and prancing while the shepherd philosophized. As cranky Jacques, veteran OSF favorite Sheila Tousey balanced the groovy tone with a touching and melancholy interpretation of the iconic “all the world’s a stage” monologue. The final scene featured multiple couples joining in matrimony alongside a polyamorous threesome of Touchstone (the fool) Audrey, and William. A philosophical and magical production, As You Like It continued the affirming and joyous tone of the season.  

The Shakespeare offerings took a dark turn in the Bowmer Theatre with Rosa Joshi and upstart crow collective’s spare and percussive Julius Caesar. As Romans rhythmically waved flags to represent patriotism and its undercurrent of violence, the motion and drumbeat sank into audience members’ bodies, compelling them to become part of the crowd. In this athletic piece, ensemble members convulsed and trembled at length during transitions and in the background of some scenes, signifying the earthquakes caused by shifting political authority. Luciana Stecconi’s scenic design of angular levels and rectilinear columns provided a canvas for projections of dripping blood and lightning flashes. upstart crow’s practice of casting exclusively women and nonbinary actors in classic pieces enabled new resonances of gender and power vis-à-vis the nation. This production belonged to Jessika D. Williams, whose show-stealing Mark Antony cleverly manipulated the Roman rabble at Caesar’s funeral. In the ensuing riot, the mob attacked Cinna the Poet and lifted him into the air while he physically reached to the audience for help, before pulling him down and murdering him. A lengthier death scene than Caesar’s, this violence was rendered even more brutal by Joshi’s addition of a parent character, restrained by a violent Roman, forced to watch while the child was murdered. The final tableau before intermission featured this parent cradling Cinna’s body, repeatedly sobbing, “he is Cinna the Poet.” The suggestion here, that political violence fails to halt tyranny but does end poetry, landed like a blow in the liberal and artistic space of Ashland.  

In the same space, playfully satirizing Western notions of class and sexuality, Oscar Wilde’s The Importance of Being Earnest delighted with its lush scenery, rich costumes, and innovative setting. Director Desdemona Chiang set the piece in the British Malay peninsula during the Victorian era. In a production that foregrounded physical comedy, the number of muffins and cucumber sandwiches consumed was outnumbered only by the crumbs spewed across the stage as Algie talked with his mouth full. The setting and racially diverse casting infused this comedy of manners with questions about bridging cultural differences related to acceptable social decorum. When British Gwendolen and Southeast Asian Cecily descended into food-based slights and name-calling, their rift felt as much about race and culture as about their both being engaged to “Earnest.” As a white British aristocrat concerned with capricious standards of behavior, Lady Bracknell’s double take at Cecily’s sandalled feet and bare ankles represented the negotiation of colonial norms—and the humor to be found therein.  

As if to underscore the connection between this season and the thriving OSF of the 2010s, this year’s musical, Stephen Sondheim’s Into the Woods, was a moving recreation of a 2014 production. Focused on the effects of storytelling, the show began with actors in neutral colors and a big bag center stage from which actors pulled props: Red, her iconic cape; the Baker’s Wife, her husband’s scarf. The audience’s introduction to Milky White was as a cardboard box with a Sharpie sketch of a cow and the word “moo.” Hilarious additions such as the princes riding full-sized tricycles with horseheads instead of gallant stallions, and words such as “Juicy” and “Brat” lining the stepsisters’ gaudy dresses enlivened this production with humor. However, the element of the production that moved me most was the massive twenty-one-piece orchestra that covered two levels of the stage, with the conductor in the house. When the Witch began the iconic second-act song, “The Last Midnight,” she stood atop the center stage grand piano while scenic automation moved it downstage, and the musician playing it never batting an eye. Director Amanda Dehnert’s choice to populate the pit with professional musicians alongside amateur high school and college mentees supported the intergenerational storytelling of the musical.   

Walking into the Thomas Theater for Octavio Solis’s Quixote Nuevo, audiences were met with vibrant accordion and guitar music and an upstage wall of sandstone-colored boulders. An adaptation of Miguel de Cervantes’s Don Quixote de la Mancha, Quixote Nuevo relocated the story of an older man with an active imagination from Spain to a fictional town situated on the US side of the Texas/Mexico border. The production opened with Quijano, a Spanish literature professor who believes he’s Don Quixote, rising atop a pyramid of books from a trap door in the stage floor, clad in a bathrobe and boxers, and brandishing a sword. Herbert Siguenza played Quijano with playfulness and sincerity, opposite Raul Cardona’s sinister and powerful Papa Calaca, or Father Death. An ensemble in skeleton costumes sang, danced, and stomped their feet to usher Quijano to the afterlife. As his mind fractured across three planes—the real world, his fantasy world, and the world of the afterlife—Quijano squeezed in one last adventure before Papa Calaca took him, vowing to fight for the unemployed, uninsured, and undocumented. This story about dreams, nostalgia, and valor tapped into the human need for adventure and the imperative to negotiate borders—between Spanish and English, nations, cultures, and life and death. In traditional OSF style, this piece braided a classic text with contemporary sociopolitical issues, a blend of adaptation, and homage that resonated across multigenerational audiences.  

Recent seasons of the festival have featured dynamic individual productions but have been a bit uneven. This season, every production vibrated with power and creativity. The strength of the productions, the volume of audiences, and the atmosphere across the three performances spaces all indicated that the festival is poised to thrive under Tim Bond’s leadership. Next season will grow to ten productions, and OSF seems to be moving confidently into this next phase.