I was appalled and disgusted by Oregon Shakespeare Festival’s current production of “The Three Musketeers.” 

It seemed the adapter took the fact that Alexander Dumas had a black grandparent to turn this story into a showpiece for current (bad) black cultural trends. In this, I also found it racist — racist against whites: the (largely) white audience is pointedly told we are responsible for Dumas’ father being imprisoned (he was a general in the French army, by the way, and was held as a prisoner of war). And racist against blacks, by showcasing the dregs of black society as being representative of black culture. 

I left the show after the third “m….rf….r.”  This is vile, nothing less. Don’t go, but if you must, don’t take your kids, don’t take your parents. Dumas’ story is part of world literature but, funny, I don’t recall Dumas using such a word. Neither did King, Robeson, or others. But I guess we must be liberal and tolerant and accept whatever we are told is black culture. Personally, I don’t find it art, I find it trash. Yes, we could call trash art, but it is still trash. I did not go to any more of OSF’s productions. 

Ronald Beauman

Berkeley, California