A brilliant new play makes its debut on Ashland stage.

Byline: REVIEW By Paul Denison The Register-Guard

EDITOR'S NOTE: The Oregon Shakespeare Festival in Ashland kicked off its 2005 season this past weekend, opening four plays of the 11 that will be staged between now and Oct. 30. Today, Register-Guard arts writer Paul Denison reviews these first four.

ASHLAND - Psalm 137 is an exile's lament. So is Robert Schenkkan's "By the Waters of Babylon," which uses that psalm's first line as its title. It explores the predicament of an isolated woman and an isolated man whose experiences are factually different but have had similar emotional consequences.

Both have been caught in what the playwright calls "spiritual traps."

She's a widow who has hired him to clean up her long-neglected patio garden in Austin, Texas. At first they seem to have nothing in common. She's tall, blond, bright, an eruditely witty prattler who obviously has doctored the contents of that Diet Coke can. He's shorter, dark, Hispanic, testy and taciturn. At first.

But Catherine (Catherine Coulson) quickly discerns that Arturo (Armando Duran) is not just a gardener but a writer, from Cuba. Driven by curiosity, loneliness and mojitos (a Cuban rum drink), they begin to loosen up.

He tries to teach her how to dance, but she resists, saying she's a wallflower with two left feet that don't talk to each other. He goes back to fundamentals, leading her through the elements of music back to rhythm and dancing.

Thus begins a long, slow, fascinating dance in which they dip in and out of each other's sad life stories and into each other's emotional lives, warily looking for curative love. Dance may not be the right word. Swim might be better, because both Arturo's story and Catherine's have a lot to do with water, real and metaphoric: dangerous, cleansing and redeeming waters.

Arturo loves his country in a poetically sensual way, but he also is bitter about Castro's betrayal of the revolution and his oppression of artists who might expose his failings. Arturo also is so haunted by survivor guilt that he can no longer write.

"By the waters of Babylon, there we sat down and wept, when we remembered Zion," it says in Psalm 137. But it goes on:

"If I forget you, O Jerusalem, let my right hand wither! Let my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth, if I do not remember you, if I do not set Jerusalem above my highest joy."

Just substitute Havana for Jerusalem and you have Arturo's problem in a nutshell. He cannot remember the Cuba he loves without remembering his friends who did not survive their fugitive boat ride to Miami, without acknowledging all that has gone wrong economically and politically. He is an artist free of tyranny, but he cannot write.

"By the Waters of Babylon" is not just about exile but also about the way nostalgia blinds us to political reality. In Cuba today, Arturo points out, posters everywhere show the face not of Fidel Castro but of Che Guevera, who died a hero, young and pure. In the United States, Catherine adds, we make icons of John Kennedy and Ronald Reagan and forget their flaws and misdeeds.

Although Arturo believes he was saved and blessed by the Orisha (goddess) of the ocean, Catherine has a deep-seated fear of drowning, caused by a childhood accident. She also has memories of loss, from childhood and womanhood, that are tied to water.

And she suffers from her own type of survivor guilt, connected to her late, unlamented husband, and from a wariness about love. This surfaces dramatically only after she and Arturo fall into each other's arms. This happens in a poignant rainfall/baptismal scene that ends the first act, as she speaks soothingly and endearingly in Spanish, and he repeats the words in English.

The second act of "By the Waters of Babylon" is all about crippling guilt and sin. Here, too, water is crucial. Except that this time it's salt water. Arturo and Catherine seek redemption at the ocean's edge in a beautifully staged climactic scene that was presaged by a brief reference to magical realist Gabriel Garcia Marquez in the first act.

Illuminations, the festival's annual playgoer's guide, includes remarks about magical realism that Schenkkan made last year in an interview with festival dramaturge Lue Morgan Douthit.

"We talk about magical realism as a literary style, but I prefer to think of it as the unexpected encounter between the mundane and the divine," Schenkkan said. "What is more transformative than falling in love?"

Those in the audience Sunday afternoon had a transformative experience of another kind.

A world premiere performance of a play by a Pulitzer Prize-winner (Schenkkan won in 1992 for ``The Kentucky Cycle'') would be a proud and exciting moment for any theater, even if the play flopped. This one will not, and the Oregon Shakespeare Festival can be especially proud.

Schenkkan wrote "By the Waters of Babylon" specifically for festival actors Coulson and Duran, who had impressed him with their performances in small character roles during his first visit to Ashland.

The festival commissioned the play, and Schenkkan wrote and developed it in unusually close collaboration with Duran, Coulson, Douthit and director Bill Rauch, who had directed Schenkkan's "Handler" at the festival in 2002.

The collaboration also involved four festival designers: Michael Ganio (scenic), Denis Damico (costume), James Ingalls (lighting) and Jeremy Lee (sound).

In every way - a powerfully poetic and carefully structured script, brilliant acting, sound directing and artfully ingenious design - "By the Waters of Babylon" has hit the boards absolutely ready for the big time.

Schenkkan won his first Pulitzer for a play that was never staged in New York. If the Orishas are kind, he may have done it again. And if the Orishas are just, wherever this play goes, Coulson and Duran will go with it. No one could possibly do it better.

"By the Waters of Babylon" will run through June 24 in the New Theatre, which is the festival's smallest theater.

IF YOU GO

For tickets or for information about the Oregon Shakespeare Festival in Ashland:

Phone: [phone]

On the Web: www.osfashland.org

CAPTION(S):

``By the Waters of Babylon'' was written especially for Oregon Shakespeare Festival actors Catherine Coulson and Armando Duran. The script is like a kind of dance between their two characters.