The morning of opening night.

It all starts at 8 p.m. in the Bowmer with “As You Like It,” which seems right.

And the opening plays are all over the map, as usual. A sunny Shakespeare comedy, Chekhov’s dark-comic/ironic masterpiece, the Stoppard farce, a newish kitchen sink drama.

“As You Like It” (Friday night) is far from being among the best plays in the Shakespeare Canon. There is no villain or antagonist, in fact no real obstacle to completion of the plot’s objective: the triumph of romantic love.

And nothing really happens, except some people go into a forest, which they keep calling a “desert.” Once there they sort of hang out and bounce off each other and yak yak yak in what we could see as little verbal/philosphical duets, trios, quartets and choruses.

But AYLI is irresistibly good-spirited, and it’s usually fun.

Director JR Sullivan has set it in 1930s America, the aptness of which is not immediately obvious. Can you see Woody Guthrie running around the Forest of Arden with a guitar? Duke Senior played by FDR? The Kingfish, Huey Long, is the bad duke. Jaques is a bipolar Will Rogers on his depressive cycle (Rogers never met a man he didn’t like; Jaques never met a man he liked). WPA crews and CCC camps all over Arden. …

John Tanner, who wrote original music for the production, told me that Sullivan and the design team decided AYLI was about identity and change. Hmm. I always thought it was about the pastoral life versus the court (not real rustic life with dirt and stuff, but a popular Renaissance genre of poetry). And on a deeper level, it’s about love, with Willy the Shake once again sounding like a fifth Beatle.

The main thing in AYLI is a good Rosalind. She doesn’t have much of an arc. She falls in love w/ Orlando in Act 1 Scene 2 and spends the rest of the play benignly manipulating everybody. Still, she’s a delight, and it’s one of the great roles in all Shake, a notch behind Lear, Hamlet, Falstaff, etc., an elite few. Miriam A. Laube was a good enough Hermione in Winter’s Tale and Julia in Two Gents, but in AYLI it’s up to Rosalind to carry the play. She hasn’t had a part like this at OSF.

Another key is Touchstone. Audiences often insist on taking him as a likeable clown. He is not. First, he’s not a clown, he’s a fool. There’s a big difference. A clown is a bumpkin and figure of ridicule whose action is usually outside the main plot. A fool is a professional entertainer/quipster who is involved w/ the other characters and has license to comment on their foibles.

Nor is Touchstone likeable. Instead of needling one’s betters, as a self-respecting fool does, he lords it over his social inferiors, or tries to. Contrast his arrogant tomfoolery with the simple dignity of the shepherd Corin, whom he mocks. And then there’s T’s idea of marriage. It is simply about lust, and one woman is as good as another. Contrast with Rosalind’s outlook on romantic love. She is a lovely character in whom we sense depths. Touchstone is a shallow, rather unsavory character.

The idea is, see the four new plays opening at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival over the weekend (Feb.23-25), write reviews Saturday and Sunday mornings (the other two spill over into the top of next week) and blog here frequently when not driving back and forth between the office and the theaters or home to catch some sleep.

The hours are tough, but it beats honest work.

The idea for the blog is to post stuff often, including midnight first-impressions stuff right after the performances.

Not that the reviews themselves are the final word either. I’ve alway thought of them as impressions written on the fly, the first rough drafts of whatever.

An editor asked me to knock some of the polish off for the blog. I figure to succeed beyond her wildest dreams.

We feel that OSF is our “home court” here in the Rogue Valley, and we should beat the other guys with our notices, including those big papers to the north and south. There are reviewers at OSF from up and down the left coast and even back East.

There’s no possibility of writing at midnight for an early morning paper like in those old movies about Broadway where the actors gather anxiously at Sardi’s or whereever to await some critic’s pronouncement of their doom from on high.

I’ll write the review of Friday night’s play Saturday morning for Sunday’s paper. Then it’s back to Ashland for plays Saturday afternoon and Saturday night. Sunday morning I’ll write the Saturday matinee review, then head back to see the final play of the weekend Sunday afternoon. Review-writing continues Monday morning, and the last two notices run in the paper and on-line Tuesday and Wednesday.

At plays, I’ve been known to gently poke people who are snoring. But by Saturday night I’m usually in danger of nodding off myself. Please please feel free to poke me.

One friend said I should sleep on a board, like a Samurai, this weekend. Keep a pen and a notebook next to my board.
Ain’t gonna happen.

Anyway, nobody beats us into print with OSF reviews that we know of. That would require an afternoon paper, which is a vanishing breed (maybe that’s redundant, maybe we’re all a vanishing breed). Reviews go up at www.mailtribune.com the same morning they appear in the paper.

I usually prepare for the openers by reading the plays. In the case of Shakespeare and the other classics like Chekhov and Moliere this year at OSF, that usually means re-reading them. I guess if they hold up, that’s why they’re classics. So I never mind.

I usually find new things in old plays. Though it’s hard to say whether it’s because a longer experience of life enables you to find new depths, or whether you’ve just forgotten most of what you’ve read.

Some plays I really beat the bushes, read the theatrical history, sometimes academic criticism, bios of the playwrights, old newspaper notices, actors’ memoirs, gossip, whatever. I talk with people at OSF for stories and kick ideas around with old dramaheads.

But I’m lazy, too. I don’t always do this, nor do I do it for all the plays.

I’ve learned over time to wind down a week or two before the openers so I don’t go in with my head so full of stuff it interferes with the ability to see the production fresh, which is kind of what it’s all about. You don’t get rich doing this, so the main thing is to have a good time.

My usual inclination is to go with the director’s take on the play and criticize within that framework. How well did she bring off what she set out to do? What elements aided or messed up the overall concept? But the concept itself is fair game, too. Hamlet as a cowboy? OK. Two Gents as bisexual? Maybe. But if you claim that King Lear is basically about a very big real estate transaction, and you’ve set it on Mars to explore the real estate there, you’re asking for it.

There’s less leeway in the production of a newer play. Audiences don’t have the familiarity that enables artists and directors to vamp on the thing. It’s like jazz. You need to know the tune before you can jam. It helps if an audience knows it too. Besides, a living playwright might become incensed and kick your butt.

I take as a credo the simplest and yet hardest one I know: just tell the truth. These people are pros, and you shouldn’t pussyfoot or put a gloss on things. Neither is it the point to demean everything and see who can be the bitchiest.

Harold Clurman, whom I take to be probably the best theater critic in English since GBS, said one should respect the readers by holding high standards, be aware of one’s prejudices and blind spots, err on the side of generosity and seek to enlighten rather than carp or puff.

Here’s to that.