True, there are still one-liners aplenty and sufficient shtick to remind you that this is the same fellow who wrote “The Odd Couple,” but the laughs seem to be spaced further apart, making room for a number of well-drawn characters to reveal their caring, loving natures.

The setting is the Polish Tea Room, a theatre district coffee shop/luncheonette/hangout run by a big-hearted and generous elderly immigrant couple, Bernie (Jack Seybold) and Zelda (Susan DuMond) who serve as den mother and father to a cross-section of stars, wannabees and playgoers. (They even gift their patrons with free pieces of cake.)

There is no single compelling plot here, merely a series of mostly one-to-one conversations played out in parallel on a realistic, warm and well-appointed set designed by Don Zastoupil. In fact, Simon self-deprecatingly, and deftly, anticipates such criticism by putting such a critique into the mouths of gossipy matrons Arleen (Linda Otto) and Cindy (Pam Ward) with regard to a play they just saw. Otto and Ward are, by the way, deliciously annoying.

The stage here is dominated by the commanding performance of David King-Gabriel, one of the Rogue Valley’s top song and dance men, who plays comedian/actor Mickey Fox, an old hand and a bigger-than-life Broadway star. At a center table, Fox is being courted by a British producer (Roy Von Rains, Jr.)

Gabriel’s certainly got the mega-energy for the role and the gumption, and he’s likeable to a fault. (Credit director Paul R. Jones for casting him.) And even his over-the-top New York/Jewish accent, while unfamiliar to a reviewer who grew up in Brooklyn, made me smile. But the playwright failed to give him any single foil of substance to play against. Imagine Felix Unger without Oscar Madison? And that’s a shame.

The most interesting of the interwoven stories is about an erudite and fiercely proud black South African playwright, Soloman Mantutu, a surprisingly complex character portrayed by the gifted actor Steven Dominguez. Frankly, an entire play could have been written about him. Mantutu, led to believe that his first play would be produced on Broadway, found himself in New York without the plane fare to return home. His sob story melts the already molten heart of Bernie who hires him to wait on tables, while the comic Fox becomes a mentor.

Brandy Carson is a hoot as the eccentric, ancient and addled Rayleen Browning who makes her entrances in a most-peculiar hand-crafted coat of furs. As Mickey cracks, “With one coat, she cleaned out the Bronx Zoo.” On her arm is the enigmatic husband/caretaker Charles (Grant Shepherd) who, until near the play’s end, is entirely mute.

While the laughs may not come quite as fast and furiously as you might expect from a Neil Simon offering, this is a sweet and engaging play with characters drawn from a deep well of compassion. “45 Seconds from Broadway” is playing in Talent through June 9.

As a Realtor associated with Cascade Sothebys in Ashland and Southern Oregon, I want to thank you in advance for your business and your referrals. What could be better than working with someone who shares your love of theatre? Call me at 541-778-8949.

The New Orleans tenement building designed by Christopher Acebo, a stylized cross-section of sorts, is onion-skin transparent, providing a more-than-vaguely uncomfortable voyeuristic notion that heightens the sense of immediacy as well as a metaphoric sense of place.

The set also seems to foreshadow that no one who dares enter this world can escape being seen for what and who they truly are. There’s no place to hide.

Which may be why the character of Stanley Kowalski appears so comfortable as the king of this Lilliput castle. He is most certainly crass, crude, uncouth and controlling, and unapologetically abusive, but he is also as transparent as the set itself. There’s no attempt by him at pretense. If he wants something/someone, he takes it/her; if he’s angry, he rages, throws stuff, smashes stuff. He can be a real bastard, but at least he’s refreshingly real; in contrast with his sister-in-law Blanche DuBois (Kate Mulligan), that’s a big deal. And, in the deft hands of Danforth Comins, at times Stanley is nearly likeable.

The play begins with Blanche’s arrival in the normally tumultuous household of Stanley and Stella (Nell Geisslinger). On a supposed leave of absence from her teaching post, she’s grappling with the emotional blow of losing the family’s Mississippi plantation to foreclosure. Of course, that’s nothing compared to the grappling she’ll soon be doing with Stanley—literally and figuratively—who suspects she might have cheated his wife of some of the remaining fortune.

Her tangle of dark and sordid secrets unravels under Stanley’s scrutiny, even as she romances Stanley’s co-worker Harold Mitchell (Jeffrey King).

While Blanche’s descent is swift and unstoppable, Mulligan’s sure grip on her character and director Liam Moore’s command of the pace ensures that the angst-filled moments ripen slowly and with minute detail and nuance. That’s a great gift to both the audience and the actors.

The great challenge in producing this piece is, of course, the giant shadow cast by Marlon Brando, who defined the role both on Broadway and in the film. How could anyone forget his haunting and plaintive cry of “Stella,” begging her to take him back after his drunken and abusive rage?

Comins does well to avoid the minefield of imitation, managing to flesh out a Stanley who is as believable as Stella’s lover as he is Blanche’s tormentor.

This is a straightforward and welcome production that does great justice to a taut, tight and tension-filled Tennessee Williams’ script that remains as resonant today as when it opened in 1947.

You can see it at the Bowmer Theatre through Nov. 2.

As a Realtor associated with Cascade Sothebys in Ashland and Southern Oregon, I want to thank you in advance for your business and your referrals. What could be better than working with someone who shares your love of theatre? Call me at 541-778-8949.

For one thing, who could possibly have known what excellent and persistent punsters these pooches could be?

When I first encountered the premise—a purely canine perspective of a day in the park sans best friends a.k.a “a dog park as a singles bar”–I confess to having doubts that it would have the paws to sustain two full acts. So I was pleasantly surprised to find myself and my play-going partner smiling long past the curtain call.

Though the actors don’t prance around on all fours—at least not often—they consistently capture the essence of dog with mannerisms consistent with their breeds’ personalities. In other words, it’s anthropomorphism at its funniest.

Since I’ve been advised that picking favorites among one’s pets is probably injurious to their psyches—and that every dog ought to have his or her own day, I will say only that each of these performers is adorable in his or her own way.

The story that carries the show is a twelve-legged puppy love triangle inspired by the beauty of Jillian Van Niel’s Daisy, a Westie who attracts serious sniffing attention from Scott Fuss as Bogee and Chris Carwithen as Itchy.

Bogie, a lab/mutt and the park Alpha sporting black leather pants, is darkly handsome, semi-suave, a cross between Humphrey Bogart—“In all the dog parks…she had to walk into mine.”–and Elvis Presley—it turns out he ain’t nothin’ but a pound dog. Itchy, a short-legged and rambunctious Jack Russell, is played with comic abandon as a nervous and nerdy Nellie who displays the sexual self-confidence of Woody Allen in his earliest roles.

Then there’s Kyle Smith as the collie Champ, a self-centered show dog who’s up for a part in a “Lassie” remake. He also has some interest in Daisy—at least until he finds himself wearing a cone so he can’t lick the stitches from his, uh, operation. His reaction to the off-stage neutering is hysterical.

The song and dance numbers may not be memorable or entirely inspired—I did enjoy “Deep Dog Doo Wop”— but the voices are strong, the harmonies are sweet and the energy of the cast is unflagging. A dance between the lovers could only be described as a delightful pas de dog.

Dog Park ought to come with a warning however. The puns come fast and furious; there’s hardly any time for groaning.

For instance, when one of the doggies leads with his nose, he tells us that he’s “checking his pmail.”And, in describing his nervous condition, Itchy refers to himself as “humperactive.”

The co-creators, Jahnna Beecham (who’s also the director), Michael J. Hume and Malcolm Hillgartner keep the play fresh with the injection of some inventive shtick. My favorite was a TV game show send-up called “Speed Mating.”

Since the Cabaret is a delightful dinner theatre, you’re probably not likely to forget to take home your doggie bag.

By the way, as the announcer commanded the audience before the curtain, “Sit! Stay! And Enjoy the show.” We did. “Dog Park, the Musical” plays through May 26.

As a Realtor associated with Cascade Sothebys in Ashland and Southern Oregon, I want to thank you in advance for your business and your referrals. What could be better than working with someone who shares your love of theatre? Call me at 541-778-8949.

What’s been written and what I’m writing now, in fact, merely engages the mind; it’s straightforward, makes logical sense and follows a linear progression.

This stunning and thoroughly-engaging production doesn’t do anything like that. Rather, it grabs you, grips you and grinds you between the truthful teeth of its whirring musical gears. And, after ninety straight minutes—there is no intermission to break the spell—it releases you…sort of. Days later, I continue to experience post-dramatic sensations that testify to the success of this world premiere.

I know, this is the part of the review where I’m supposed to tell you what it’s about, what the story is. But I’m hesitating because what I read about it going in didn’t prepare me at all for this intense sensory experience. With theatre like this, it would be like trying to use words to convey the scent of a flower.

Still…we enter into a stark death row dungeon in a prisoner of war camp during World War I. In the face of the grim reaper, they take solace—and courage—in song, specifically the haunting blues ballad, “St. James Infirmary.” Joe (Ian Merrigan), the last man standing, is subsumed within the surreal story of the song, slipping into the role of the Big Joe McKinney, who just inherited King Jesse’s barroom/brothel/gambling house after the king was taken by “the plague,” as the influenza epidemic was known.

With clown-like fists of metaphoric proportions, he falls in love with a woman with no arms, Big Joe’s daughter Rae (Kjerstine Rose Anderson) whose multi-level salvation becomes his mission.

All this is set to music, blues, jazz, hip-hop. Only it doesn’t feel so much as though the story has been set to music; rather the music here is integral, life-blood to the perambulating bones of a theatrical organism that is very much alive and self-sustaining.

And that’s the point here, the one made so clearly by the five-man team of creators, that music—all sorts of music—is as necessary to our survival as food, shelter and clothing and, in fact, even more so.

While I would be well-justified to hand out kudos to particular performers— that doesn’t seem to be make much sense here or amount to a fitting tribute. (Even to remark that this is “ensemble acting at its best” seems a pale understatement.) Since I see this production purely as an organism, it would be like giving more credit to an arm, say, than the heart or a liver. Like the soldiers on Death Row, they (we) are in this thing together.

What seems most remarkable is that this poignant and profound reality is effectively refracted through fantastical cartoon-inspired characters and characterizations. The sustaining mood is one of a dark whimsy as Joe and Rae and the other denizens of this dreary and dilapidated bar grapple with the pervasive presence of the plague, as death crouches at the doorstep.

And yet, as morbid as this may sound, the theatrical experience that director Shana Cooper shares and celebrates could not be more upbeat, exuberant or more utterly lively and life-affirming.

“The Unfortunates” is unforgettable. I urge you to see it yourself, through Nov. 2 at the Thomas Theatre.

As a Realtor associated with Cascade Sothebys in Ashland and Southern Oregon, I want to thank you in advance for your business and your referrals. What could be better than working with someone who shares your love of theatre? Call me at 541-778-8949.

Thank God for that. Because not only is “The Sound of Music” a classic in the best sense, with a storyline and songs held dear a half-century after its Broadway opening, this play, for good reason, is revered as a holy icon. Any negative comments by a reviewer might well be received as nothing short of blasphemy.

So I’ll say it again: Thank heaven that director Roy Von Rains, Jr., the cast and crew and the fine off-stage six-piece orchestra did justice to Rogers and Hammerstein’s music and the book by Howard Lindsay and Russel Crouse.

Set in Austria in the tense days before the occupation and annexation by Nazi Germany, the story is about the real-life wealthy von Trapp family. The patriarch, Georg (Don Matthews), whose heart was hardened when he became a widower, hires Maria (Rose Passione), a nun in training, as a governess for his seven children. The household, run with military discipline and precision, and not much fun, is overturned by the effervescent Maria who dispenses love while developing the children’s world-class musical talents. Meanwhile, even as Georg courts Elsa Schraeder (Livia Genise) as a potential mother for his kids, he finds himself susceptible to Maria’s charms. (Needing to come off as less lovable and less authentic than Maria, Elsa is a particularly challenging role; Genise does what is necessary with polish and finesse.)

Matthews and Passione clearly have the stage presence, training and theatrical sophistication to carry out their demanding roles. And while a felt sense of chemistry between them was somewhat lacking, the couple compensated well with the sincerity of their performances, their genuine likeability, mutual admiration, and well-matched voices. Passione managed to mine the depths—and doubts—of Maria’s heart.

As written, it is the children’s role in this play to hold its center and maintain its spirit with unflagging energy, humor and true innocence even as they tug (but not too hard) on the audience’s heartstrings. Being adorable can’t be enough; they’re simply on stage too much. And that’s a lot to ask for any group of young amateur performers. It’s a credit to them and to the Camelot company that these children pull it off. And they sing well enough ensemble to make a convincing case as the celebrated Trapp family.

Julia Holden-Hunkins as the “sixteen-going-on-seventeen”-year-old daughter Liesl personifies the cusp of womanhood with a mature and nuanced performance for an actress of any age. Revealing character beneath her pretty smile, she and Passione’s scenes are credible and moving.

As Kurt, one of the middle children, Preston Mead takes full advantage of a role that provides ample opportunity to be playful; he is incorrigibly cute, clownish and delightful. The kid’s a natural, someone I’d enjoy seeing again.

In very much the same way, Mark B. Ropers rises to his role, injecting a most-likeable childish quality and good humor into Max Detweiler, the amoral, apolitical music booker of the Saltzberg Festival.

The ultra-minimalist set for the Saltzberg abbey where we first meet Maria among the nuns—it’s just bare stage in front of the dark curtain—is a good choice, reflecting the order’s devotion to unadorned simplicity while providing a stark contrast to the colorful character of the wise Mother Abbess, played with conviction and a twinkle by Kris Wildman. Her mezzo-soprano Kate-Smith-size power voice was perfect to handle the inspirational “Climb Every Mountain.”

The set pieces behind the curtain—the Von Trapp gardens and, at one time, Maria’s bedroom—made excellent use of the rear projection screen to warm the stage and match the mood from a rich color palette.

“The Sound of Music” is scheduled to play through April 15, though if advance ticket sales are any indication, I can imagine that the run might need to be extended.

As a Realtor associated with Cascade Sothebys in Ashland and Southern Oregon, I want to thank you in advance for your business and your referrals. What could be better than working with someone who shares your love of theatre? Call me at 541-778-8949.

It wasn’t until the next day, having marinated in the memories, that I could appreciate the remarkable feat the two-time Pulitzer-prize-winning playwright August Wilson, and his director Lou Bellamy had accomplished in this play exploring the black American experience.

It was as if Wilson had had merely taken these fully-fleshed humans, flipped a switch, set them in motion and let them be. Then, for three hours, be they do.

That is the singular brilliance here: the writer’s—and director’s—invisible hands. No puzzle piece appears to have been forced into place, no words seem less than authentic. There’s no pandering to a punch line or cheap theatrical thrill.

What we witness here is a community of seven redeemed, redeeming and redeemable souls— gloriously ordinary people—over a period of days within the unconfining confines of a failing inner city restaurant. It’s four years after Malcolm X’s assassination. The neighborhood is dying. Only the funeral parlor and the numbers racket are prospering.

To make way for urban renewal, the city is taking the restaurant by eminent domain. Which is okay by the owner, Memphis (Terry Bellamy), if he gets the fair settlement he hardly expects. Ironically, Memphis longs to reclaim the farm he’d been run off of decades before. His retelling of that day when his mule was eviscerated and his crops burned was chilling, perhaps because the recitation was so matter-of-fact.

While the play is primarily plotless and the antagonist (white society and the system) is off-stage, the characters’ stories are consistently compelling. Perhaps the most poignant and picturesque in imagery is Hambone’s story. Played with a depth of devotion by Tyrone Wilson—and very few words—the mentally-impaired Hambone refuses to release himself from a decade-old grudge. Promised a ham for painting a white grocer’s fence, he was paid off instead with a chicken. Since then, his cries, “I want my ham” have resonated as an emblematic call for racial justice.

While the individual performances are consistently excellent, this is a consummate ensemble piece and one that seemed to be scored more like a symphony than scripted as a play, with the author’s ear keenly tuned to the interwoven harmonies and dissonances of the black experience in America. With this score, Wilson is thoughtful and patient and not particularly predictable.

The patience that Wilson demands, particularly in the first act, as his characters root themselves in the audience’s imagination, is personified in the character of Risa, the waitress (Bakesta King), who steps across the stage with the rhythmic precision of a human metronome set at Largo. The character is further defined by the scars covering her legs; she cut herself to make her less likely to suffer the advance of men. Credit King’s fine performance for the fact that, by the end of the play, her gait and her injuries were hardly noticeable; all I saw was the kind and open heart of an angel.

Though the characters’ life stories hold fascination, in a theatrical sense, the emotional crescendos are mostly tempered. Whether that proves sufficiently satisfying will depend on your tastes and expectations. I suspect the tempering was intentional, perhaps to make the point that the most dramatic events are rare, and that revelations drawn from the white spaces of history can be more interesting and instructive. (It worked for me, but not for my companion, who found the play lacked emotional punch.)

The humor here is pervasive and generally character driven; it’s a running joke, for instance, that the wealthy undertaker West (Jerome Preston Bates) asks for sugar for his coffee, starts to pour, but never completes the act. (sugar interruptus, I believe it’s called.)

The funniest scene has the characters mocking the countless ways West, the undertaker, profits from his caskets. Along with a guarantee that a box won’t leak for 20 years, he’ll sell one that locks and for only a hundred dollars more.

None of these characters are perfect; all are flawed and ordinary, but in their own mundane ways, they do come across as heroic.

“Two Trains Running” plays through July 7 at the Bowmer Theatre.

As a Realtor associated with Cascade Sothebys in Ashland and Southern Oregon, I want to thank you in advance for your business and your referrals. What could be better than working with someone who shares your love of theatre? Call me at 541-778-8949.

Lear’s parenting was like that too, wrong-headed and plain dumb, touching off an ill-fated family drama with international implications by divvying up his kingdom to his daughters based solely on their attestations of admiration. In both cases, the Daddy’s decision is an inevitable set-up.

I’ve always had a pretty clear take on the Jacob-Joseph dynamic and the driver of that plot. At least on one level, Jacob’s tragic flaw was his susceptibility to being swayed by superficialities, in this case his son’s physical beauty. How else could Jacob possibly imagine things would turn out?

Lear’s tragic flaw, say the Shakespearean scholars—is similar. Basing his royal gifts on superficialities, how could he hope for a happy ending?

The rub here is that in the production I saw starring Michael Winters as Lear—Jack Willis plays the role in alternating performances—the flaw is subsumed by a sense that the king doesn’t merely go mad in the end, but that he is, from the start, suffering from a progressive Alzheimer’s like dementia.

Seen through that prism, I felt little more than pity for Winters’ Lear. He engendered not my anger, nor hate, or even empathy. And, since I was not inclined to hold him responsible for his unruly and deadly rages, the impact of the production was weakened. As a character, he simply wasn’t that interesting. (Whether Willis interprets his Lear in the same way, I will report on later this season.)

And that is the real pity here. Because in every other way, director Bill Rauch has succeeded in staging a most satisfying high-concept, theatrically-intense and graphic experience in the most intimate of settings, the Thomas Theatre (Formerly known as the New Theatre) configured for seating in the round.

The play presents two parallel stories of pathetic and pathological patriarchal families: Lear, intent on giving his kingdom away—in an almost-game-show atmosphere—pits his three (contestant) daughters against each other. While Goneril (Vilma Silva) and Regan (Robin Goodrin Nordli) flatter their father, Lear’s favorite, Cordelia (Sofia Jean Gomez) refuses to play by the rules. For that, she is banished.

At the same time, the Earl of Gloucester (Richard Elmore) is tricked by his bastard son, Edmund (Raffi Barsoumian), into believing that his son Edgar (Benjamin Pelteson) intends to kill him.

That second piece, by the way, is far more successful in eliciting a rainbow range of emotions. Barsoumian’s villainous portrayal of pure power greed is clear and cutting and Pelteson’s Edgar, who is particularly likeable and compelling in his disguise as the near-naked beggar, Mad Tom. And Elmore’s portrayal, particularly after his blinding, is tender, rich and many-layered.

No doubt the most critical role in the play—and in this particular realistic and explicitly violent production—is that of the Fool, played by Daisuke Tsuji, who does far more than merely provide much-needed comic counterpoint as a wildly careening clown (while imparting real wisdom); he is a welcome force of nature, taking dizzying turns and, at one point, even leaping into his king’s lap.

While I can’t say it detracted from the storytelling, I couldn’t help wondering what was gained by infusing this production with a modicum of modern trappings and costumes; the military types were dressed in camouflage and green berets, a prisoner in an orange jump suit, while Gloucester looks like an IBM executive in a white shirt and tie. (By the way, the disconcerting sense I had that Lear is entering the Alzheimer’s endgame was only reinforced by sitting him in a wheelchair with an I.V. drip.

While the painterly lighting, with stagehands sometimes bearing portable spots, provides an effective complement for a devastating soundtrack, scenic designer Christopher Acebo mirrors the emotional wasteland with a brilliant third-act set that resembles a world upended, twisted and torn asunder.

“King Lear” plays through Nov. 3.

As a Realtor associated with Cascade Sothebys in Ashland and Southern Oregon, I want to thank you in advance for your business and your referrals. What could be better than working with someone who shares your love of theatre? Call me at 541-778-8949.

The answer, thanks to the deft direction of David Ivers who assures a production as accessible as any Shakespearean work and a “Shrew” whose political incorrectness is sanitized by silliness, is a resounding “Yes.”

The updating and re-setting to a touristy Coney Island-like Padua boardwalk is spot-on, seamless and consonant with the content. Consider: If you had to pick a food that captures the flavor of this piece, I suspect you’d choose cotton candy. The pinker the better.

The story line centers on a family with two daughters. While the Daddy, Baptista (Robert Vincent Frank), is eager to marry off both of them, there’s a problem: While the younger sister, Bianca, a ditsy blonde played deliciously by Royer Bockus, has all the suitors, she can’t accept a proposal until the older one weds. And that’s doesn’t promise to be easy since Kate (Nell Geisslinger) has the likeability of a land mine.

Luckily for Bianca and a coterie of court-jester suitors, Petruchio (Ted Deasy), devoted to capturing Kate’s sizable dowry, is undeterred by her demeanor.

And so, the pretty and purpose-driven stage is set for a center-ring circus spotlighting Kate and Petruchio, along with a several satisfying sideshows with a complement of the most uncourtly court jesters.

There’s ardent suitor Lucentio (Wayne T. Carr) masquerading as a Latin tutor to get close to Bianca while his servant pretends to be him. And Hortensio (Jeremy Peter Johnson) who, for the same reason, poses as a music tutor.

And then there is David Kelly as Gremio, yet another suitor. Aided and abetted by the clownish performance of Tasso Feldman as his servent Grumio, and dressed to hilarious effect as a nerdy tourist, Kelly attacks the funny bone with a full-bodied comic vengeance. Once again, this guy is brilliant.

With Petruchio’s courtship of Kate, Shakespeare’s script would suggest that the circus ring should take on the feel of a boxing ring, with no holds barred. However, that’s not exactly what you will see at the Bowmer Theatre, where the script itself has, thankfully, been tamed.

Credit director Ivers for shaving the textual truth as necessary in order to render this production not only politically palatable but persistently playful.

The play, as written and intended, would be a serious affront to our more civilized sensibilities. And, in fact, even with his cutting and careful shaping, there is no way to avoid such scenes as Petruchio denying his bride dinner, even when the act—his dominance and her apparent submission—is couched in a semblance of good humor.

However, thanks to the nuanced performances of Geisslinger and Deasy, who throw their verbal weight around with wit and polish, pulling more punches than they deliver, the production mostly rides above the socio-political fray.

In fact, in the end, the players provide more than a hint that Kate is maintaining her integrity while making a pretense of her apparent submission. The minimal, but compelling, evidence has Kate presenting Petruchio with a come-hither crooked finger and an implied command. With no hesitation or argument, he heeds her call.

And happily, they live, ever after.

You can enjoy this rollicking amusement park ride through Nov. 3.

As a Realtor associated with Cascade Sothebys in Ashland and Southern Oregon, I want to thank you in advance for your business and your referrals. What could be better than working with someone who shares your love of theatre? Call me at 541-778-8949.

Not long after I’d jotted down how director Amanda Dehnert was succeeding in squeezing every last smidge of humor from this classic script, she surprised me, exposing the very DNA of the source material, George Bernard Shaw’s play “Pygmalian” on which the 1956 Lerner & Loewe musical was based. To a grand and dramatic effect, she revealed the crushing and often-cruel class system that must be overcome—or at least overlooked—for the unlikely romance of a flower girl and an English Gentleman to ever be consummated.

The result is a play that manages to leave you walking out of the Bowmer Theatre not only gaily humming the many infectious tunes, but thinking as well.

Perhaps what I’m responding to is related to the fact that the production is modeled on the touring company version of the show. While the show that opened on Broadway in 1956 featured a pit orchestra of 26 musicians, the score for the traveling companies was recreated for a pair of pianos, with company voices filling in for the lack of instrumentation.

I admit, having adored the show on Broadway as a child—as well as the film adaptation—I entered the theatre a skeptic. How could two keyboards provide the sumptuous sensory experience of memory? While the wall of sound might not qualify as sumptuous, the musical presentation was every bit as satisfying. And the on-stage presence of the pianists worked. In no way does this have the feel of a scaled-down show.

It is, though, a very different piece, and in some ways superior to the original, with a staging that is novel and effective. Perhaps the most noticeable difference is that Dehnert consciously loosened the corset of conventions associated with this classic. For one thing, she keeps the company chorus handy, stowed in two rows of upstage theatre seats, serving as peanut gallery and subtle sounding boards to the protagonists.

And, while the original was given over as a masterpiece guarded by a Do Not Disturb sign, Dehnert has set out a welcome mat, making the fourth wall permeable at times and lighting a spark or two of spontaneity. The result is a sense of immediacy and even intimacy.

Since this is the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, I have come to expect new twists, novel turns and even radical departures. But nothing prepared me for the smoking, showstopping “Stomp”-like acapella dance and rhythm interlude that erupted in the midst of “Get Me to the Church on Time.” Wow. (Perhaps the company can issue this is as a stand-alone video.)

The straightforward story here is about an attempt by British linguist Henry Higgins (Jonathan Haugen) to turn a cockney-accented flower girl, Eliza Doolittle (Rachael Warren), into a proper-English-speaking lady.

When we first meet Warren’s Eliza, she is such a tough and street-hardened survivor—much tougher and much more real than the character portrayed by Audrey Hepburn or Julie Andrews—that I couldn’t imagine a softening…ever, and certainly not in just two acts.

The same was true with Haugen’s Higgins whose arrogant veneer appeared case-hardened against any errant tender thought. (As when his partner, Pickering (David Kelly) asks, “Doesn’t it occur to you that the girl has some feelings?” and he replies succinctly, “No.”)

Yet, as a result of these choices, the arc of development of the protagonists was far grander in dimension than I could have imagined, producing a most poignant and even somehow unexpected conclusion.

While Warren and Haugen do great justice to the book by Alan Jay Lerner and the music by Frederick Loewe, Tony Heald, back to OSF after a year away, borrows if not steals the show with his broad and boisterous rendering of Eliza’s father Alfie, a most crude and cockney clown.

Kudos as well to Ken Robinson as Eliza’s crooning suitor Freddy and Miriam A. Laube as Mrs. Pierce, who heads Higgins’ household staff. Robinson displays his pure vocal power on “Street Where You Live,” sustaining one sweet note seemingly for minutes. And Laube is quite simply a force of nature on stage.

This production, which plays through Nov. 3, feels like a classic in its own right. See it soon so you can see it again.

As a Realtor associated with Cascade Sothebys in Ashland and Southern Oregon, I want to thank you in advance for your business and your referrals. What could be better than working with someone who shares your love of theatre? Call me at 541-778-8949.

Perhaps the best measure of the success of this production is how much more I wanted to know about this this dynamic performer whose streaking and impactful career was cut short by a plane crash when she was only 30.

Still, the fact that this slick and satisfying offering didn’t allow itself to bog down with bio or background seemed fine and fitting. As a vehicle to showcase the superb vocal skills of Kymberli Colbourne, a company constant and consummate character actress, the show could not be more successful.

My guess is that, for Patsy Cline fans—I confess I’ve never been one—her performance is likely to be a revelation if not an apparent resurrection. (I confirmed the by firing up a Greatest Hits album on my I-phone as soon as I left the theatre.)

Even for the Cabaret, this is a minimalist production, spartan even. Single mike. Single bar stool. Patsy’s autograph in lights above the stage, a large frame of white lights. And yet, warmed by the performances of Colbourne, the comic antics of Christopher Bange, and the contributions of the three-piece band, the less-is-more staging by director Jim Giancarlo is more than sufficient.

The Cline we are shown here is simple, homespun, milk-fed and seemingly authentic. That we don’t get a back-stage or off-stage perspective is fully intentional. Dean Regan, the creator of the show—he produced it first in 1991—allows us to experience her from the perspective of various audiences, in venues ranging from honkytonks, the Grand Old Opry, Las Vegas and even Carnegie Hall.

As commanding as Colbourne is—I’d sign up any day to watch her in concert—Bange’s versatile performance as radio deejay/narrator, Opry clown and Vegas comic provides necessary depth and dimension. And a heck of a lot of pure fun. I loved how he handled even the oldest one-liners and groaners, like, “I got a new truck for my wife…It was the best trade I ever made.”

What struck me in retrospect, though not during the show, was that Colbourne and Bange rarely, if ever, play off each other. (The script simply doesn’t allow for it.) So we never do get to know Cline in relationship or even in conversation. In fact, I found myself looking hard for any clues to her character. For instance, was her remark about the band’s lack of enthusiasm evidence of anything or just a throwaway line to remind us she was performing in jaded Las Vegas?

Still, Colbourne, who does honor to 19 Cline numbers, from the romantic ballad, “Always” to the classic Hang Williams tune, “Your Cheatin’ Heart,” proves herself the consummate professional in this production, one that’s perfectly tuned to the style and dimensions of this elegant dinner theatre.

You can catch the show through March 24.

As a Realtor in Ashland and Southern Oregon, I want to thank you in advance for your business and your referrals. What could be better than working with someone who shares your love of theatre? Call me at 541-778-8949.