Beti Webb Trauth, Eureka Times-Standard

April 15, 2014

Although you may have seen many of the always fascinating plays at Ashland’s Oregon Shakespeare Festival, seldom-if- ever would you have experienced such absolutely stunning sights as those now dazzling audiences in their current, extraordinary production of “The Tempest.”

Visionary veteran director, Tony Taccone, and his skilled technical staff have inventively collaborated to create a phantasmagorical, seductively strange visual landscape representing vengeful magician Prospero’s remote, mysterious, and potentially dangerous island domain.

As stated in the production’s program notes, this work “is often considered to be Shakespeare’s farewell, his last play as a solo writer.” In the spiritual journey of Prospero toward forgiveness and reconciliation “one see flashes of Shakespeare confronting his own life’s final act.”

In any case, like life itself, the characters must deal with all of the alternating emotional highs and lows that beings confront during their time on the planet. Keeping that in mind, it’s no wonder that the play has never been able to be neatly categorized. It’s an interwoven, romantic, tragi-comedy–and that’s the secret of its timeless timeliness. […continued]

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