Travel Diary: Oregon Shakespeare Festival
by Fred and Linda Fenton
Leisure World Residents
You may have been to the Oregon Shakespeare Festival in Ashland, perhaps more than once. It is a popular venue. This was to be our first visit, and despite everything we had been told about it, we had no idea what awaited us. But I am getting ahead of myself. Our trip began with a flight to Eugene to visit family.
Located on the Willamette River, Eugene is best known as home to the University of Oregon, founded in 1876. Our hotel was located next to the Fifth Street Public Market, featuring cafes, shops, and Marché, a French restaurant. At dinner there, we enjoyed a bottle of pinot gris from Territorial Vineyards, an urban winery just one mile away. In all, there are 600 vineyards in the area.
Everyone will have a favorite spot in Eugene. Ours is a place we believe sells the world’s best ice cream. The shop has a funny name: Prince Puckler’s. The Prince, it seems, was a 19th century German nobleman known for his love of ice cream. Of the 40 flavors at Prince Puckler’s, our favorite is Oregon Bing Cherry.
In 2008, then presidential candidate Barack Obama and his wife Michelle visited Prince Puckler’s. A sizable crowd gathered. The store has a sign announcing Obama’s choice of mint chocolate chip, and they sell a lot of it.
After a few days in Eugene, we drove our rental car 177 miles south to Ashland, Oregon. The Oregon Shakespeare Festival, located downtown, was founded in 1935, the year I was born. It is a repertory theater offering a wide range of classic and contemporary plays performed six days a week in three theaters.
We had tickets for two Shakespearean plays, “The Tempest” and “King John.” Unfortunately, on the day we were to see “The Tempest,” a terrible fire broke out in Weed, California, 60 miles away. Smoke drifted toward Ashland, affecting air quality. It caused cancellation of the play, which is performed in an outdoor Elizabethan-style theater.
I was disappointed because I had studied “The Tempest” in preparation for seeing the performance. “King John,” the following day, was an indoor performance that did not need to be cancelled. Rarely performed, this play tells the story of a corrupt monarch who fights to hold onto his crown at all costs.
Does that sound familiar? The production featured an all-female cast. The actors managed deep voices and forceful movements, including swordplay, doing it all so well we soon forgot we were watching women playing male roles. The audience gave the cast two standing ovations. To reach our last stop, Walnut Creek, California, we drove 330 miles south, choosing a route that included a drive across the Golden Gate Bridge. No matter how many times you may have been there, the bridge is always a thrilling sight. It took four years to build, starting in 1933, and is the most photographed bridge in the world.
San Francisco streets were full of happy, Labor Day crowds. Cable cars full of people were clanging up and down city hills, with some riders hanging onto the outside (yes the outside) of the cars. Cable cars date from 1873 and have become an iconic symbol of the city. Yet, in 1947 city leaders, citing the lower cost of buses, moved to remove the cable car system. Friedel Klussman, a determined woman, began a successful movement to save the cable cars.
The rest of her life she rode free. Cable car operators would announce her presence to applause and cheers from the other riders. Arriving in Walnut Creek, some 25 miles from San Francisco, we visited family and friends in the area before flying home to Long Beach. Soaring temperatures in Walnut Creek and Seal Beach over the Labor Day weekend, plus the extensive fires we have been experiencing in California, underscored the reality of climate change.
