“The Happiest Song Plays Last,” now at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival’s Thomas Theatre, is part three of a trilogy by Quiara Alegria Hudes. Last year the Festival presented part two, “Water by the Spoonful,” directed, like this play, by Shishir Kurup.The author, inspired by her cousin Elliot, the youngest Marine to be deployed to Iraq, has stitched his story to others, creating a colorful quilt of present-day issues.Focusing on Puerto Ricans in Philadelphia, as well as a homeless man, a part-Arab actress who doesn’t understand her roots, and a displaced Iraqi without papers, the play stresses the benefits of diverse communities.Elliot, played with great sympathy by Daniel Duque-Estrada, is dealing with PTSD as he pursues a post-military career in film. When he is cast as a soldier in a movie being made in Jordan, he reawakens a terrible memory he must strive to put to rest.Elliot’s cousin Yaz is a young music professor who has become the family matriarch, as well as an activist and
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