Though I had been looking forward to attending my dear friend’s fortieth birthday party at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival for sometime, I did not immediately fall under Ashland’s enchanting powers. The neighboring town of Medford was a perfect nightmare to negotiate. (Looking back, Taido and I decided that Medford is the external cost of blue collar industry that enables its southern neighbor of Ashland to be the charming gem of a place to visit that it is.) We set up camp on a lake nearby before Taido and the kids dropped me off for the weekend, and part of me wanted to stay at camp with them and just meet all those strangers later at the play. I had not seen my friend Laura for at least five years and a little insecure part of me thought that maybe she wasn’t still going to like me. And then there was the staying in a house with ten other people and sharing a room…even a bed with a total stranger. It had been a while since I had been around people. Maybe I had forgotten how to be sociable. So I was a little jittery when Taido dropped me in the street and drove off. I ascended the lime green stairs of the yellow house where we were staying and was much relieved when Laura answered the door. Seeing the face of a dear friend after a long absence is a telling moment. It is amazing how the years just melt away and the comfort of shared experience of long ago rises up to create a safe haven of familiarity. As she ushered me into a parlor with a high ceiling full of her other dear friends and family, I determined to put all my nervousness behind me and allow myself to be swept away by the place. We introduced ourselves, each explaining how we had the happy fortune to know this blessed girl. And I remembered as each girl was talking that of course a girl such as this friend of mine would have collected around her a group of friends who are as special as she is. That I am camping all over the country with my family is hardly a drop in the bucket of collective experience of this group of women. How many stories could be told about such wonders as living in Malaysia, taking two teenage sons out of school for the year to travel the whole world, living with your family at camps, cruising the Rhine river, teaching in Germany, getting married this summer or being an annual attendant and member of the Oregon Shakespeare Festival…um, can you guess which gal I asked the most questions. Yes, the high school drama teacher who sees a loads of plays and was our resident expert at the OSF. (That’s how she referred to the Oregon Shakespeare Festival…like they are old friends. Can you imagine my envy?) She was very patient with me as I asked her about three million questions about the festival. About the acting company and all the different variations she has seen of Comedy of Errors and Twelfth Night. She will be back in Ashland in two weeks with her family and I would really like for her to take me with her in her pocket, but I can only imagine that she will greatly enjoy her weekend without that hic girl from Arkansas badgering her.

Jitters aside, everyone rushing around to get ready to go to dinner and the play gave me a moment to breathe and prepare to be enchanted. (I wasn’t rushing around because I had already learned from my new BFF that you don’t have to dress up for the festival…and since the theater is outside, jeans are even preferable once the sun goes down and the chilly night air blows over the walls of the Elizabethan Stage.)
We had a lovely, if somewhat rushed dinner, sitting at a table outside with the waters of Ashland Creek rolling along beside us. Then as we meandered up the street to the play (at this point I was downright giddy) we ran into my family! They had been in the park seeing a free performance and the magic of the night just fell into my lap when we realized that because we had an extra ticket to Comedy of Errors that we had been trying unsuccessfully to sell, Mary Polly could come along with me to the play. And of course, part of the wonder was that the play turned out to be the most perfect one for her to see. Mary Polly was already predisposed to love Comedy of Errors because not only is it hysterical, it is Shakespeare’s shortest play, but Comedy of Errors rendered into a Western Musical was belly-aching HI-larious. I think I may have been distracting in how much and how loud I laughed. Besides being caught up in the moment of being in a REAL LIVE ELIZABETHAN THEATER and seeing SHAKESPEARE, Hello! My daughter was laughing with me…following the language and asking the right questions at the right moments. She was getting it. Do you know how great that is? Your first experience with Shakespeare can be key to your lifelong enjoyment of his brilliance. I had to overcome some very bad Shakespeare lectures from high school before I could fall properly in love with him in college. I feel certain that this rendition of Comedy of Errors could supplant anyone’s previous frustrating experiences reading through Shakespeare. Every actor was brilliant. On. Usually when I see a Shakespeare play (don’t you like how I write that like it happens all the time?) I am drawn to one or two characters and the rest are sort of marginal. But at the OSF, these people know their Shakespeare. The actors are playing in multiple Shakespeare plays all year. They all share a green room that is underneath the theaters and is connected by tunnels from each of the three theaters. So every character is playing as well as the lead. At any given time, I would look to the side where the main action wasn’t happening and the characters there would be on. Alive. The motion on the largely vertical set of Comedy of Errors built throughout the play until you were wondering how on earth anyone could possibly be certain of where they were supposed to be going. I cannot imagine how complicated the blocking must have been of all that activity. But the effect was so much fun. I was still laughing as we drove Mary Polly back to the campground and I quickly tucked her into the quiet camper before returning to the house. In fact, being far too giddy to fall asleep, it was after 2am before I finally calmed down enough from the excitement of the evening to doze off into the luxurious sleep of a mother whose children are safely away with their father.