4 Plays/3 Days: Reviewing Shakespeare in Oregon

by Bob Keefer

A newspaper theater critic (one of the last of a breed) spends three frantic days covering the summer openings at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival in Ashland, Ore., where "Twelfth Night," "Henry IV, Part One" and "Merchant of Venice" (directed by Bill Rauch, the festival's hot new artistic director) are opening on the outdoor stage. Ashland, a rural town in Southern Oregon, has one of the best regional theaters in the country.

Reviewing the plays is exhilarating, engaging and exhausting for the critics, who come from newspapers and websites around the West Coast to cover the openings.