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HE Oregon Shakespearian Festival, at Ashland, presented Twelfth Night, The Merchant of Venice, King Lear, and Henry VI, Part i, on its outdoor, Elizabethan-type stage. The three-story tiring house is ornamented with Tudor half-timbering and surrounds a trapezoidal, thrust stage, overhung with a shadow supported on the playing area by two slim columns. An oblique entrance with a gabled casement window above faces onto the playing area far stage right and stage left. In the center is located a curtained inner stage, above which is a curtained gallery of the same width, and on the third level a smaller gallery. That this structure, erected in I959 with reference to the Fortune contract according to its builders, is more suitable for comedy than for tragedy was clearly demonstrated by this season's productions. The impression of the whole comes off as a rather playful, nostalgic notion of merry England, and one expects Mistress Ford and Mistress Page to throw open the casement windows instead of Joan of Arc and a Master-Gunner of Orleans. The darker side of Shakespeare tends to be forgotten at Ashland, and the most successful production of the summer turned out to be Twelfth Night, directed with no little grace and skill by Robert Loper. Three players in particular should be singled out for their unusually fine performances: Elizabeth Huddle as Viola, Gail Chugg as Malvolio, and John Getgood as Sir Toby. One of Ashland's major difficulties lies in the unevenness of its company, which is put together anew each season, and, in general, these three players were not sufficiently supported by the remainder of the cast. The "cakes and ale" crowd managed a great deal of inventive fun, thanks also to the imagination of Loper, but Orsino did not wallow convincingly in his own love-sickness and Feste did not succeed in developing a character. In fact, the high comedy failed to attain that diamond-like hardness and clarity necessary to set off Sir Toby et al. Malvolio, clad in a sour grimace and a black cloak and pointed hat, equipped with a great key and a staff of office, took over the downstage area with his letter as Fabian, Sir Toby, and Sir Andrew roared around behind a pair of potted plants upstage center. The high point of the evening proved to be Malvolio's delivery of his imaginings: "Calling my officers about me [with a sweep of the hand], in my branched velvet gown; [a self-satisfied smile] having come from a daybed, where I have left Olivia [pause] sleeping,-[the right hand extended downward toward the fancied bed in a moment of vivid pleasure]". This was followed by one of his characteristic gestures-the pressing of his fists against his chest with an ecstatic, upward gaze. Here Loper and Chugg presented not a mere buffoon but a threatening figure, ill suited by temperament either as a

series of high poles, a crown atop each, in a semicircle behind a playing area which included a sizable forestage. At the outset these surrounded a throne, later they were hung with ship's rigging, and in the grand finale they supported a great tent. The English were dressed in simple reds and browns and the French in rather ornate blues and whites. The whole created a light, airy, and at times colorful atmosphere for a light, airy, and usually colorless production. The focus of the play is on Henry V, a once reckless youth now attempting to become a vigorous leader. He is young, powerful, impatient, and thoughtful -warrior and lover. But James Ray gave us a weakling-a lightweight, petulant and playful, boyish and uncommitted, whose most successful scene was the interlude with fair Kate. And by this time one had long since lost interest in him. Director Douglas Seale seemed to be much more intrigued by the weird and bizarre in the decadent French court than by the human plight of the common soldier at Agincourt. Around the camp fire the night before the battle Bates, Court, and Williams received clever answers from their disguised ruler: the king is but a man, as I am. . . ." Did Ray smile at the audience? Douglas Watson as the Dauphin created a fascinating study of the haughty, ineffectual, strange psychotic-petted by his mistress and praising his horse. In the battle a body was dragged on stage; the Dauphin then mutilated the corpse. But unfortunately Patrick Hines, the French King, was not equal to the role given him-of ranting idiot and overstuffed buffoon. There were two men on the stage who commanded the listener's attention particularly with their speech: Tom Sawyer as Chorus and Lester Rawlins as Fluellen. Perhaps Sawyer spoke too familiarly, at times with a coyness that called attention to itself, but he understood what he had to say, and felt and conveyed the importance of each line to those in front of him before stepping back into the ensuing tableau. And Fluellen was no caricature. One paid attention to every syllable of an actor who totally impersonated with a real gift for concentration. Each, Sawyer and Rawlins, communicated a sense of understanding what the poet had written for him, and the creation of a character dominated in these instances the pretty scene. Douglas Seale also directed The Comedy of Errors, displaying a rich and fresh imagination for countless gags with Douglas Watson as both Antipholus