Dorothy Velasco reviews the Oregon Shakespeare Festival's production of Off the Rails , the first play by a Native American to be performed at OSF. This is KLCC. I’m Dorothy Velasco with the Ashland Theater Review. “Off the Rails,” the first play by a Native American to be performed at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, is a mishmash — part comedy, part musical, part history lesson, and part morality tale loosely based on Shakespeare’s “Measure for Measure.” As directed by Bill Rauch, this saga by Randy Reinholtz is set during the 1880s in Genoa, Nebraska, the site of a school for Native American children known for its brutality. In the play, we often hear the chilling slogan, “Kill the Indian and save the man.” This lavishly staged production features exemplary acting and music. Although the author hammers us with undigested statistics, by the end I felt a wrenching sadness for the suffering of a conquered people mingled with pride in their ability to regenerate their cultural heritage.
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