review

The Oregon Shakespeare Festival can certainly laugh at itself - and bring an entire audience along for the chuckles, guffaws and even one or two lung-squeezing long laughs.

And who'd have thought an Italian commedia dell'arte plum from 1753, would be the vehicle for the company to chortle at its financial woes and poke fun at Macbeth, The Music Man and other OSF productions?

The Servant of Two Masters, adapted in a big way by Oded Gross and directed with utter grace by Tracy Young, opened at the New Theatre last week.

Traditionally, commedia dell'arte players set up in the town square where they did without, recycled their props and poked fun of the times. This production is in the finest tradition of the art form, with reused costumes and even chunks of stage floors from past productions for our own town square.