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“Silence”

Last night , , and I went to the Back Door Theate on SE Hawthorne last night to see Silence, a 1999 play by Moira Buffini. We preceded this with a lovely dinner at the Bread and Ink Cafe. ‘s eldest daughter plays Agnes, the lady’s maid, in the production. (And I thought she was brilliant.)

I enjoyed it immensely. The production was incredibly sparse — black box theatre, bare stage a few feet from the audience, with exactly one set-piece which served many roles. Costuming, light and sound were barely more detailed, just enough to give the actors a framework in which to perform. Everything focused on story and character. The story itself is a gender-bending reimagination of the meeting and marriage of Aethelred the Unready and Emma of Normandy, but that’s sort of like saying that Romeo and Juliet is about a couple of Italian kids on a date.

There’s some Shakespearean gender-foolery, and some serious underlying commentary about marriage and life-roles, but in the current American context the play’s political content is frighteningly on-target. (All the more so that it was written before this administration even came to power.) If you’re in the PDX area, I highly recommend this play.

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