Aspects of Tragedy

Though both plays were directed by OSF’s new artistic director Bill Rauch, the earlier one was the modern classic by Ibsen, and the play this year is The Further Adventures of Hedda Gablerby Oregon playwright Jeff Whitty. I wonder how many times he’s been told he’s a whitty guy? (Now watch the spell-check spoil the pun.) But his play is full of wit and invention, and even if the postmodern jumble sale through time, space and pop culture technique is getting a bit familiar, this show is delightfully theatrical and surprisingly provocative in challenging the whole art-and-audience enterprise.

Hedda revives to learn that as the heroine of a cherished tragedy, she’s required to stay in character. But in trying to escape the “cul de sac of tragic women,” she sets out on a quest with her faithful companion, Mammy (from Gone With the Wind). Among the other characters she encounters are Medea from Greek mythology and Dorothy from The Wizard of Oz. Also two versions of Jesus. But even more than Mammy (Kimberly Scott) and Hedda’s husband George (Christopher DuVal), the ones who actually become human characters are Patrick (Anthony Heald) and Steven (Jonathan Haugen), living fossils from The Boys in the Band era of flamboyant gay culture.

Hedda’s odd hero’s journey finally takes her to the Furnace of creation, where fictional characters like her are born, either to become trapped in immortality or to die at some point from lack of popularity, victims of the “genocide of indifference.”

It’s unusual for a new play to appear on the main stage of the Bowmer Theatre rather than the smaller New Theatre, but this show takes full advantage of the space and its facilities, including the revolving stage. It’s a delightful moment-by-moment ride that keeps on surprising on one level or another.

In the end, the play also seems to come down on the side of tragedy as an essential expression and reflection of the human condition. But at other times on this same stage, The Clay Cartand the Sanskrit theatre’s aim of dramatizing virtue offers a different reading of both art and human potential. As editor and scholar van Buitenen suggests, “Why not argue that Greek tragedy constitutes the exception, not the rule, and that it presupposes a very specific notion of moira (fate) …?” And perhaps our arts as well as our science and politics have ignored other possibilities, including those qualities in the world and in ourselves that contribute to more fully accurate images and assessments. Which might provide a balance, even an emphasis necessary for the future of the human enterprise, and the world we tragically threaten? Something to think about, on the way home.

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