Bit of Ivory

So, I’m BAX from the Utah Shakespeare Festival, and it was marvelous, dahling. So I don’t lose my motivation, I’ll recap the weekend now. Pics will be uploaded shortly– I’m still having issues getting my camera to talk to Harry. Grrr.

Anyway, read on, ’cause this is long:

Shakespeare Fest Day One (Thursday)

The day started with me working for 4 hours– I wanted money, my preciouss. By the time I got the car packed and picked up Jen, it was about 1:30. We jammed to my iTunes download CD on the way down to Provo, where we picked up Kat. Then it was off to Cedar City– about a 3 hour drive from Provo. We listened Stephen Fry’s Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets–we all love his Gilderoy Lockhart– and Jen’s iTunes CD, on what was really a pretty uneventful drive. We got off an exit too soon once we got to Cedar City, so we ended up driving down Main Street for a bit. We still found our hotel without much difficulty–Cedar City isn’t *that* big, after all–and after dropping our stuff off we went to Sonic for dinner, where they proceeded to forget to bring everything I personally ordered except for my french fries. *sigh* I did eventually get my BLT and lime slush, though, and we made it back to the hotel in time to catch the complimentary shuttle to the Festival itself.

We found a seat on the small hill across from the Greenshow stage, and proceeded to be amused by the vendors. One, who introduced himself as Farmer John, flirted outrageously with the three of us while trying to get us to buy chocolate. We all ended up giving in. I got an English toffee, which was pretty good. Eventually the Greenshow itself– with an Irish thme–started. It was amusing enough, but we couldn’t hear very well because a) we were kind of far away and b) it was windy, and even rained a bit. We resolved to move closer next time.

After the Greenshow, a recorded fanfare sounded to let us know the play was about to start. Let me just say that I loved the Adams Theatre. It’s a reproduction of a sixteeth century theatre, much like the original Globe– with the exception that there are seats on the ground floor instead of making us stand for 3 hours. We had pretty good seats– we were on the second row on the west. I think I’d like to try the gallery the next time, though– sometimes important things happened on the balcony that were hard for us to see, and other times actors perched on the front of the stage stopped us from seeing the main action. Anyway, the play that night was Taming of the Shrew. It was highly enjoyable. I found that I’d forgotten a lot of the details of the Bianca subplot since I’d read it at the age of 15, so it was fun to watch that unfold. The play included the usually-discarded framework of Christopher Sly the tinker, which I had never even known existed. I was very confused at first. The actor who played Lucentio was rather cute. He was in both the other plays as well, although in smaller roles both times, so I got to enjoy his good looks for two more nights. Anyway, for a first-time seeing-Shakespeare-live experience, it was great.

We caught the shuttle back to the hotel, dodged the little baby grasshoppers, and made it up to our hotel room. We stayed up late talking about Harry Potter, and decided to sleep in as long as we wanted in the morning. Ah, vacation, how I love thee.

Shakespeare Fest Day 2 (Friday)

Having decided to try to avoid the Saturday-of-a-holiday-weekend crowds in St. George, we got up around 9ish and prepared ourselves for a tough day of shopping and seeing movies. St. George is about an hour away from Cedar City, so we listened to more CoS on the way down. We had fun in the outlet stores– I bought some sandals for $20 and a nice pair of Eddie Baur khaki slacks for another $20, and managed to get out of the Rocky Mountain Chocolate Factory with buying only one square of English Toffee. After a small bit of discussion, we decided on Red Lobster for lunch. I tried crab for the first time– I really liked it!–and we enjoyed a nice leisurely lunch before heading over to the movie theater to see Spiderman 2. We all drooled over Tobey McGuire and The Cute Astronaut. Good flick. As much fun the second time as the first. The first time I saw it I found the body-surfing scene to be a little sappy, but this time I got all choked up. I always love those kinds of scenes– as long as they’re not dripping in cheese like the Hagrid love at the end of CoS. But the Spidey scene is just the right amount of cheese.

By the time we got back to St. George we were all hot and tired and hoping for time to take a nap. Alas, it was not to be. None of our keys would open the door, so we trooped down to the front desk. The girl there reprogrammed them and we trooped back upstairs– only to be foiled again. We went back downstairs, and this time the girl came back up with us. She couldn’t get the door open either, so she went back down to call someone to change the battery in the door. We decided we’d rather sit somewhere air conditioned than make too many more treks, so we went to dinner at Pizza Factory. It was pretty good– hot, and fast, and tasty. By the time we got back, our door was fixed and we had some time to rest a bit before catching the shuttle once again.

We got better seats for the Greenshow than on Thursday. I sat on my cloak to keep my new pants from getting too damp, and we settled down to wait. Farmer John came back, remembering us from the day before, and tried to flirt us into buying more chocolate. He remembered Kat’s name but not mine or Jen’s. Before we knew it, he was asking Kat on a date. Jen and I deliberately stayed out of it, but enjoyed watching it unfold. She eventually agreed, and they made plans to get a little something at a cafe after the play the next night.

The Greenshow Friday had an English theme rather than an Irish one. I liked them both. Usually, when there are performances on the stage that don’t involve all of the performers, they’ll walk around the audience and make sarcastic comments, etc. One of the performers grabbed a little girl and gleefully called “I’ve found a child for sale! Child for sale!” We all laughed of course, and the little girl eventually stared crying, of course, so he took her back to her parents. It didn’t end there, though! Over the course of the show, he picked up another little boy, then two little boys with a third one tagging along, two pairs of shoes, and finally one of the girl performers, trying to sell them all. It was rather amusing.

Our seats were the same all three nights, so we made our way to them after the Greenshow with no problems. I put on my cloak because it was easier than carrying it, and pinned the Lothlorien leaf brooch that all my wonderful Wahleecon friends had given to me just above the clasp. It was very fun to wear, and got a few strange looks.

I had read Henry IV, Part 1 before, in my Renaissance literature class, so I knew mostly what to expect, although, once again, the finer details escaped me. I was very, very impressed with both Hotspur and Hal. Hotspur was suitably hot-tempered and rash, Hal suitably rascally at the beginning and noble and kingly at the end. It didn’t hurt that both were highly attractive, either. You can see a pic of them both towards the middle of this article in the Deseret News, although it’s not flattering enough to either. Anyway, they were both excellent. Falstaff was played by the same actor who played Petruchio the night before, and I must say that while he did an excellent job as Petruchio, I enjoyed him even more as Falstaff. I don’t know what it was about Henry IV– the story, the intensity, the amazing acting, the exciting sword fights at the end– but it was definitely my favorite of the 3 plays. I’d go back down and see it again in a second.

We were all pretty beat by the end of Friday, so we didn’t stay up too late after catching the shuttle back to the hotel. We didn’t plan a specific wake-up time for the next morning, although we did decide we’d go out to breakfast instead of eating the cereal we’d brought with us.

Saturday at Shakefest

Saturday dawned bright and sunny, but we didn’t really get to see it because we didn’t get up and at ‘em until 10 at least. By the time we made it to Denny’s, it was 11, and by the time we got our food, it was noon. So breakfast became brunch. It was quite fun, though– Cedar City is so small, you’re bound to run into the actors if you hang around for a while. We saw the man who played Petruchio/Falstaff, the woman who played Kate, and the man who played Tranio at Denny’s. Even though breakfast took forever to arrive, it tasted pretty good, and we were all in a reasonably good mood when we left.

We made our way over to main street, hoping to visit some of the quaint little shops, but here our own cunning outmastered us. You see, July 24 is a state holiday– celebrating the arrival of the Mormon pioneers in the Salt Lake Valley in 1847. We had decided to go to St. George on Friday to avoid the holiday crowds, thinking that Cedar City would still be open and hopping. We were wrong. All the cute little touristy-type businesses were closed. You’d think they’d want to cater to all the out-of-town traffic– the Shakefest was still going on, after all– but they all wanted to play. Bummer. We thought vaguely about seeing another movie, but the only good thing playing at the local theatre was Spidey, which, you know, we’d seen the day before. We eventually went back to the hotel to look through the guidebook for good ideas.

There are several National Parks and Monuments in the Southern Utah area. I kind of wanted to go to Zion’s, but we decided we didn’t really have enough time, and Bryce Canyon was even farther away, so we decided on Cedar Breaks National Monument instead. I’d never been there– we tried to get there once, but it was still spring and it was under a good 4 feet of snow– and I must say it was beautiful. We drove around to all the lookout points, and took a little mini-hike. Much fun was had by all, and it was a satisfied–but tired– trio that drove back down the mountain.

Since we hadn’t spent much time in the Shakefest official gift shop, and since the free shuttle wasn’t running due to Pioneer Day, we decided to drive over a bit early to the Fest and do some shopping. If I’d had more money I could have spent a fortune– as it was, I only bought a cute little pewter bell, some fingernail tattoos for my sisters, and a bit of treacle toffee (which is actually pretty darn good). After we shopped our little hearts out, we walked over to a place called the Pastry Pub, which had been recommended by one of Kat’s roommates. On the way over, Petruchio let us cross the street instead of turning left first, and a member of the Greenshow cast was eating with some friends once we got inside. It was pretty cool– decorated just like a little British pub, but serving sandwiches and coffee. They had some incense–patchouli, I’m guessing– going at the back which reminded me of Christmas, and my meal was lovely. On the walk back we met the guy who played Prince Hal riding his bike. Oh joy, oh rapture.

We found good seats for the Greenshow, which was the Irish one again. We didn’t mind seeing it again, though, because we’d been able to hear so little of it the first night. Kat’s flirt came and tried to get us to buy more chocolate (only Kat gave in), and they decided to meet after the show. I bought an apple tart from a really cute girl who told excellent jokes (okay, they were silly, but her Irish accent was excellent), and before we knew it, it was time to head to the theatre again.

The Winter’s Tale is the only one of the plays that I hadn’t read before, so I made sure to familiarize myself with the synopsis from the playbill. I quite enjoyed it. My Shakespeare teacher told us that in Shakespeare’s romances, he basically rewrote many of his tragedies. They were all written later in his life, and I guess he wanted to believe in redemption. In my class we read Cymbeline, which deals with many of the themes of King Lear, and to me, The Winters Tale seems to be reworking Othello. I was a little suprised to see a character dressed in contemporary clothes– he was billed as the Storyteller, and he gave the prologue and the introduction after the interval, and walked in and out of the action every now and then to hand characters their props. He was also the bear in the famous “Exeunt, chased by a bear” scene. The actor then becomes Autolycus in the last part of the play. I found out in the article I linked above that this was the first time they’ve had a character dressed in contemporary clothing. Interesting. Anyway, we were all very pleased that both Brian Vaughn (Hotspur) and Jonathan Braithwaite (Prince Hal) were appearing in The Winter’s Tale as well. Jonathan Braitwaite’s part was as one of the Lords of Sicily who remains loyal to Queen Hermione even when she is accused of adultery and sent to prison, and Brian Vaughn played Willem, the not-too-bright son of the shepherd who finds and raises Hermione’s outcast daughter, Perdita. Vaughn showed his versatility in portraying a character about as opposite of Hotspur as could possibly be, and doing it with aplomb. I was highly amused by his performance. At the interval I bought a Cornish pasty (mmmmm), and gushed with some ladies sitting behind us at how hot Jonathan Braithwaite is, and fun stuff like that. I enjoyed the play once more. I hope to make a journey to the Festival a yearly thing. It was definitely worth it. Plus I’d like to go to some of the seminars they hold– literary seminars, actor seminars, etc. Next year.

I must say, though, that I’m glad JKR has said that Hermione Granger, while named after the Hermione in The Winter’s Tale, is in no way similar to her in plot. ‘Cause, dude, that woman goes through a lot. It was amusing to hear her name so often, though.

After the play was over we waited for Kat’s date under the Greenshow tree, but by quarter after 11 he hadn’t showed. We decided to walk around the theatre in case he was on the other side, and indeed we met him there. Kat (borrowing Jen’s cell phone just in case) went off to the cafe, and Jen and I went back to the hotel to wait up for her. When she got back we chatted a bit about the date (it Just Wouldn’t Work on several levels, but Kat had a good time anyway), and finally went to bed.

The drive back Sunday morning was unexceptional, and we made it home safe and sound. It was great fun to see the plays, hang out with Jen and Kat, talk HP and Shakespeare with people who Know and Understand, and just all around goof off.

Umm. Can I go back?