Bill Cain's Equivocation, making its world premiere on the Angus Bowmer Stage of the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, is balanced on trust: trust to follow complex and fluid staging, trust to delve into a detailed reimaging of William Shakespeare's murky personal life, and trust that the audience will be invested in a drama that occurred over four centuries ago: England's Gunpowder Plot of 1605. The trust Cain extends to the director, the cast, and the audience should be accepted and returned in full. Equivocation is masterful work of wit, intrigue, and the machinations of the human spirit. Who better to place in the center of such a work of literature than the Bard himself?
Ultimately, the play centers of Shag's moral quandries concerning his duties to his acting company, the risk he runs in defying the powerful Cecil, and his obligation to his surviving children. In a play that delights in clever plays on Shakespearean lore and engaging contemporary dialogue, Cain finds moments, particularly between Shag and the conspirators, to pull the audience into the emotional life of these characters. He makes the audience doubt the loyalty of Shag's own actors and build a desire to know the truth that Shag himself is seeking. That is a triumph, but not the only one as the play's conclusion mounts. The final moments between Shag and Cecil are incisive social commentary on the balance between politics and art. Cain does not preach, but presents the facts of English history in a thrilling modern context.
Bill Rauch, in his second season as OSF's Artistic Director, is focusing on bringing new works to the Festival. In choosing to stage, and to direct, Equivocation, Rauch has blended a new work with Shakespearean tradition in a play that is a tour de force of dialogue, history, and gymnastic acting effort. Grounding the entire production is the work of Anthony Heald as Shag, who presents a believable, vulnerable interpretation of Shakespeare, without ever crossing into caricature or melodrama. The audience that returns the trust of Bill Cain will feel just as rewarded as those who have given their trust to that other literary Bill for the last four hundred years.