All the Town’s a Stage in Ashland

“We saw two long ones yesterday,” the woman said, as apple-and-raisin pancakes were placed on the sunny table in front of her. “Today it’s two short ones.”

The “long ones” turned out to be the plays “Henry VI, Part 1” and “Our Town.” The “short ones”--”Julius Caesar” and “Other People’s Money.”

Not your usual breakfast patter. But then Ashland, in the foothills of southwest Oregon, is not your usual small town. It’s a magical place of verve and charm, rather a high-brow Woodstock.

Since 1935, when a local college teacher proposed a two-play Shakespeare Festival as part of the town’s Fourth of July celebration, Ashland (Pop. 16,000) has been wed to theater. Three major stages now offer 11 plays in a February-through-October season that annually lures more than 340,000 theatergoers.

Visitors often stay four days, gorging themselves with matinee and evening performances of Shakespeare and other classics, as well as the work of avant-garde playwrights. They feast on fine food (from French cuisine to spicy Thai to steaks at an old-time favorite called Omar’s), and they sip fine southwest Oregon wines.

They sign up for backstage tours and actors’ lectures. They try on Shakespearean costumes at the festival’s Exhibit Center, and take in art shows, symphony concerts, ballet and cabaret. They browse through antique shops. They jog in 100-acre Lithia Park. They admire neighborhoods of Victorian houses heaped in lilacs and roses.

Above all, they talk.

They talk about what they plan to see, and review what they saw the night before. They trade tips on bookstores, sandwich shops and what weight of jacket they wore to an outdoor performance at the oldest and grandest stage: the 1,200-seat Elizabethan Theatre, with its four-story Tudor facade.

They discuss the possibility of rain, a fact of life when you combine the great outdoors of Oregon with an open-to-the-sky stage. Only the Elizabethan is susceptible to the whims of weather; the 600-seat Bowmer Theater and the intimate Black Swan are comfortably indoors.

“Performances are rarely rained out,” Barbara Huntley told me as she poured coffee in that sunny breakfast room. “But some have had spectacular thunder-and-lightning shows to contend with. If they’re playing ‘The Tempest’ or ‘King Lear,’ a storm really adds to the mood.”

Barbara and her husband Bill are the proprietors of Country Willows, a bed and breakfast inn on five acres of forest and farmland that is an eight-minute drive from the festival box office. There are seven large guest rooms (all with private baths and no smoking) in the sprawling, two-story farmhouse and handsome converted barn and hayloft. A white wooden fence frames the property, with its old willow trees and mountain brook. A swimming pool is hidden out back.

After breakfast I wandered into the den, which is rich with play scripts, volumes of English history and large photography books exploring the natural wonders of Oregon and the West. A stone hearth was set with logs. The woman with “two short ones” on her program was already reading in a high-backed rocker on the front porch.

Country Willows is tucked into the hillside where Clay Street turns into a footpath. The view across the Rogue Valley is of high-stacked clouds and blue mountains, a scene reminiscent of Austria. The only threat to calm is the occasional hiss of a ruffled goose, or the thump of the Huntley’s pet rabbit.

“When we opened six years ago, there were only 16 B&Bs; in Ashland,” Barbara Huntley said. “Now there must be 50.”

The informal pace of a bed and breakfast establishment seems a perfect match for Ashland, where casual clothes are always in order and sweaters are welcome on midsummer nights. The Shakespeare months are followed by film festivals and wine festivals, by hunting and skiing on Mt. Ashland.

By next summer, the Elizabethan Theatre will have surrounded its present seats with a covered pavilion, a plan to further shield the stage from street light and sound and also improve the acoustics. For the first time, patrons will have the option of sitting in a roofed gallery, although the heart of the theater will remain open to the stars.

“They say that it will be more like the original Globe Theatre in London,” the playgoer on the B&B; porch said, when I paused to visit. “I can hardly wait.”

She was studying her calendar and the 1992 Ashland season, which promises four Shakespeare plays, including “Henry VI, Part 2.”

“Have you tried Sammy’s?” she asked, suddenly changing her own subject. “The place looks like a dive, but the food is great. The proprietor is the cook and he’s eccentric. It’s hard to find--there’s only a fist-sized sign--and I don’t know the address because we got there after dark. They keep it pretty much of a secret.”

The challenge looms. The plot thickens. Another good reason to return to Ashland.