Good Night, Sweet Prince! Northwest Classical Theatre Company To End Residency in Portland After 17 Years

• Jason Maniccia
• Melissa Whitney and Brenan Dwyer in NWCTC’s Maids’ Tragedy in December.

This week, Clara Hillier of Portland’s theater-nerd staple, Northwest Classical Theatre Company, sent a press release announcing the company’s final performance in its present configuration, writing that their latest show, Good Night Desdemona (Good Morning Juliet), “will be the final production for NWCTC (a company of 17 years in Portland!) in its current standing.”

This is a relatively casual way for a theater company to announce a major shift like this—usually there’s a lot more self-congratulatory pomp/circumstance—so I asked her what was going on. Here’s what she told me when I followed up:

Grant Turner, artistic director will be moving the name of the company to LaGrande, Oregon where he has moved already with his family. He is starting a theater company there, and NWCTC will continue at least one production a year in Portland but no longer be full time residents at the Shoebox Theater. That is what we know as of now and we are excited for Grant’s future in LaGrande and the continuation of the name of NWCTC but we will definitely miss our permanent home in town at the Shoebox.

So there you have it: The company known for low-budge, no-frills, super-solid productions of Shakespeare and his classical theater ilk will no longer be Portland-based after this season. Granted, Portland is lousy with theater companies, big and small, and NWCTC is certainly in the latter camp. But after nearly a year of covering Portland theater, I have to say, I’ve really enjoyed NWCTC’s plays, as well as their approach to classic texts.

My predecessor, Alison Hallett, covered NWCTC in years past, and this, from her review of a late-aughts production of As You Like It, encapsulates what NWCTC’s been great at:

I absolutely love the Northwest Classical Theatre Company’s motto: “Content over Concept.” Translation: Don’t obscure your text in grandiose directorial vision or pandering rewrites. Trust that Shakespeare and Chekhov knew what they were doing. The popular conceit that classic works must be given facelifts in order to appeal to modern audiences insults both the intelligence of those audiences and the talents of the actors involved. Frequently, all that’s necessary in order to make a so-called “classic” widely accessible is a deep commitment, on the part of the theater company, to furrowing out the meaning of every line. If the actors understand what they’re saying, the audience will, too.

It’s NWCTC’s English major-y devotion to language over fancy window-dressin’ that I’m going to miss, to say nothing of the fact that it’s just nice to know you could go see a loyal production of a classic play pretty much any time during theater season. Good night, sweet prince! And flights of angels sing thee to thy rest LaGrande!

Good Night Desdemona, (Good Morning, Juliet), directed by Brenan Dwyer (Potty Talk, Timmy Failure, Action/Adventure), opens Friday, May 22. It’ll be the last production of the company’s residency at the Shoebox Theater.