In the morning of my 6th day in Ashland I did a little exploring and took a drive up Mt. Ashland experiencing some nice mountain scenery. In the evening I attended OSF’s exciting production of Hamlet. It seemed both traditional and innovatively modern. [Trailer, Notes] Music played a big part in the production, mostly provided by a Doom Metal style single performer. The stage was stark black, and the character’s costumes were all monotone white, grey, and black, except for the “players” who provided a stark contrast appearing in very colorful garb.
Even though it’s a long play, it flew by. The lead was played by an OSF mainstay, and he did a great job. His performance was intense and manic. The rest of the cast, and the secondary characters, were great too. The presentation of the ghost was interesting, sometimes zipping around quickly, which isn’t what you usually see. It was one of those plays that part way through I wash wishing I could watch it again. The second half didn’t quite maintain the frenetic energy of the first half, but it ended very movingly. The uber-classic Shakespeare tragedy, where most of the characters are dead at the end.
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Tonight I saw OSF’s production of Richard II. [
After a break day (where I totally wussed out of going to Crater Lake), I saw my next play in my 
On my second day in Ashland, I saw one of the last two plays of Shakespeare’s canon that I’ve never seen before, Timon of Athens. Not quite knowing what to expect, I was treated to a powerful, entertaining tragedy. [
This was allegedly Karl Marx’s favorite play. It deals with the emptiness of money and wealth, and friends who are only friends when Timon’s generosity is benefiting them, but who aren’t there when he needs help. A day after I saw it it’s striking me even stronger than when it finished. Even though it dealt with serious ideas, and it’s a tragedy, there was a lot of comedy (at least on the surface) in the delivery early on. I don’t know what a standard production of this play would be like, but this particular one was striking and powerful. I’m not sure why it’s produced so infrequently. It makes me want to see it again. … and now only one left in the canon.
Forcing myself out of bed earlier than I wanted to on a Saturday morning I undertook the 6 hour trek up to Ashland for a week of what will hopefully be great theater. This evening I saw the first play from the 
One fun aspect was a a prop element being a 1970s era Yamaha enduro. An interesting surprise, I ran into Kim Cupps who was sitting in my row. This was her last of 5 plays on a visit with her family. Small world …
Tonight I saw the next play in the 
I saw the last play, on the last night of their season, of the 
In my last full day in Colorado, I decided to venture out to the eastern plains where my father grew up, and where my father, grandfathers, and great grandfather farmed. Getting out there a ways east of Denver I have to agree with my maternal grandfather’s reported assessment when he first visited out there, namely that he’d never been anywhere he could see so far, and see so little. It’s definitely flat with some gradually rolling hills, but it’s dry and somewhat barren. It’s not like the bountiful central valley of California, but there were some periodic fields with corn growing, but mostly a lot of empty space. Maybe I just missed the growing season.
Tonight I saw one of the few Shakespeare plays I’ve never seen before, Troilus and Cressida. I’m not sure why it’s infrequently performed, and I didn’t know what to expect from it, but it was quite good. It’s really a story of the Iliad and the Trojan war, and the plot involving Troilus and Cressida is only one piece of a larger story. As seems to be the case with all the plays at the