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connielane) wrote2015-09-06 06:08 pm
connielane) wrote2015-09-06 06:08 pm
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Shakefest 2k15
For the third time over the last nine years, I made my way west to drink deep the delights of live theater at the Utah Shakespeare Festival. I first attended in 2006, the week of the Lumos HP fan convention in Las Vegas, and saw a serviceable Merry Wives of Windsor, a thoroughly charming H.M.S. Pinafore, an INTERMINABLE Antony and Cleopatra (ugh, they just WOULD NOT DIE), and quite literally the best Hamlet I've ever seen (yes, including Olivier and Branagh). I went again in 2010 and saw a nice adaptation of Pride & Prejudice, a mostly great Much Ado About Nothing, a life-threateningly hilarious The 39 Steps, an excellent Merchant of Venice, and a pretty danged incredible Macbeth.
For a while it looked like I wasn't going to be able to go this year, for reasons I won't go into, but I hadn't counted on![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
angua9 and wahlee_98 being such amazing friends. Once it was clear I was definitely going to be able to go, I started to get crazy prepared. I always *try* to read all the plays we're going to see, but I'd never gotten around to a pre-fest read of any of them until now. I still didn't get to all of them, but I came pretty close and was quite proud of myself. Since one of the plays we were seeing was Henry IV Part 2, and since I'm not confident in my comprehension of the histories, I went a little overboard and read the entire Henriad and watched The Hollow Crown (the BBC four-part miniseries that covers all four plays -- Richard II, both parts of Henry IV and Henry V). Danged if I was going to be lost watching any of these plays!
As it's MUCH easier to fly into either Salt Lake City or Las Vegas and just drive to Cedar City, I spent the evening before the festival in SLC withwahlee_98 and her family. I grinned as we passed the Denny's where our deep discussion of Bonnie Wright's performance in Prisoner of Azkaban took place during Wahleecon. There was watching of Mister Rogers Neighborhood on Netflix and Nero Wolfe on DVD. And on the way to Cedar City the next morning, I forced wahlee_98 to listen to my musical theater mega-mix -- a 16-hour 234-song playlist of songs from every major musical (and some obscure ones) from the 1920s to the present, including nearly all (or as many as I could find songs for) musicals nominated for the Best Musical Tony award. No, we didn't come close to listening to all of it, as we arrived in Cedar City somewhere around the mid-60s ("Hello Dolly").
We met Susan for lunch at her favorite diner ... that one she can't remember the name of but it's a diner on Main Street. Turns out it was called Main Street Grill. After lunch, we headed to the SUU campus for our first play.
South Pacific
First off, kudos to whoever cast actual Tonkinese children to play Emile's son and daughter. That can't be an easy find in southern Utah. This was an incredible production, on par with the recent Broadway revival. Michael Scott Harris was a wonderful Emile (with an amazing voice) and Allie Babich was a great Nellie. Nigel Huckle was a standout as well, playing Cable, and is not only a very fine tenor but can also fill a pair of khakis. Just saying. Aaron Galligan-Stierle (Billis) was one of my favorite things about every production he was in (he was also in Shrew and Henry IV Part 2), and was fantastic here. Christine Jugueta was a better Bloody Mary when she was singing, but sometimes her line delivery bordered on icky stereotype. There were people in our audience who clearly had never seen the play before, because there were gasps of shock when Liat took Cable's shirt off. Come on, people.
South Pacific is not my *absolute* favorite favorite Rodgers & Hammerstein musical, but it's close. (I still prefer The Sound of Music, but that musical is so bound up in the superb film version for me that I can't possibly look at it on its own.) It's boggling to me that people think the racial element is no longer relevant. Do these people ever watch the news??? "You've Got to Be Carefully Taught," though it's a short and fairly simple tune, still wrecks me because we are still unlearning that garbage over 65 years later. Case in point, today's news of a 14-year-old brown-skinned child who was arrested for BUILDING A CLOCK.
Between plays, we checked into our room, which was furnished with a queen bed for each of us. For dinner, we tried a new woodfired pizza place, which was yummy but a little highbrow for me. Before the evening's play, we went to the "orientation," where the director, Fred Adams, talked a bit about it. He had directed a production of Shrew back in the early days of the festival (the 60s, I think?) and described it as the most misogynistic piece of crap you'd ever seen. He said his goal for this production was to make it a love story. He pointed out that the story was set in Padua, which was an intellectual mecca of Italy (Lucentio comes there for the express purpose of studying, after all, before he gets sidetracked) and argued that "I've come to wive it wealthily in Padua" was "locker room talk" and that what Petruchio was actually looking for was an intellectual wife.
After the orientation we went out to the lawn to watch the Greenshow, a 30-40 minute pre-show of songs and skits that sort of fit the evening's play. Tonight was "Italian night" - a fitting choice for Shrew - and as we found seats on the lawn the performers were singing "We Open in Venice" from Kiss Me, Kate. There was also dancing around a maypole, and some audience members were brought on stage to "stomp grapes" and make wine, though I'm fairly certain none of their feet ever touched an actual grape.
At the conclusion of the Greenshow, a trumpet fanfare signaled to everyone to make their way to the Adams Theatre, the open-air Globe Theatre replica where all the Shakespeare plays are performed each season. It is such an authentic replica, in fact, that the BBC filmed part of its Shakespeare series there. This was a special weekend for the theatre, because it was the last weekend of performances in the Adams before they shut it down permanently (next season the main stage will be the still-in-progress Engelstad Theatre).
I think this is technically from Lear, but it's the best stage-side shot of the theatre.
Each of the performances we attended concluded with a special ceremony to mark the closing of the nearly forty-year-old space. But I'm getting ahead of myself. First, the play.
The Taming of the Shrew
It's not like this play doesn't have its problems, but I have long thought it was very misunderstood and unfairly maligned (yes, including Katherine's final speech). If you want to read Petruchio as boorish, fine, but he's not abusive. He never once lays a hand on Katherine in violence. And Katherine, for her part, has a lot of behaviors that, however understandable her motives are, need to be ... worked on.
I've seen several versions of this play, and while I adore 10 Things I Hate About You, it is obviously a transformed version of the play (Kat, in that version, at least has *one* friend, Bianca is a good deal more tolerable, and then there's Allison Janney). This production was my favorite stage version of the play that I've seen, and it had probably the strongest ensemble cast of anything we saw at the festival this year. Leading the cast were Brian Vaughn (the Best Ever Hamlet) and his real-life wife Melinda Pfundstein (who played Jane Bennett in the P&P adaptation I saw a few years back and played Goneril in this year's King Lear). Both of them were really wonderful, and I especially loved how knocked-off-his-feet-by-Katherine that Brian played Petruchio. Gremio (the old pantaloon figure) is not a character I'm terribly interested in usually, but David Pichette made him actually fun to watch (he was another favorite in everything he was in). We'd seen Aaron Galligan-Stierle as Billis in South Pacific and he was a brilliant Grumio (why does this pay have a Grumio *and* a Gremio?!). There was an extended comic bit where he tries to light a fire that was brilliant.
There was an unplanned bit of comedy in Act IV when, during a quiet moment in the action, an "alarum" in the form of a car alarm rang out and interrupted the scene. All the actors tried valiantly to go ahead with the scene, but the alarm kept honking and it just got more and more hilarious, especially as the audience and the actors started feeding off each other's laughter. Melinda Pfundstein was literally on the floor, hiding her face (and we learned the next day that she was mortified that she'd been unprofessional enough to crack in that situation).
After the final bows, the Executive Director (R. Scott Phillips) took to the stage to explain about the ceremony that was soon to take place -- a sort of farewell to comedy, as this was the last Shakespeare comedy to be performed in the Adams Theatre. He did this the next two nights as well, and each night he got choked up (as did most people in the theater, including the actors on stage). Once Scott finished his bit, the actors from the play, along with Fred Adams (not actually the theatre's namesake), came on stage. Adams read an introductory speech, thick with quotes from Shakespeare's comedies, and then the actors recited an iconic line from each of the comedies (most of them Shakespeare's, but not all) that had been performed on that stage.
When we got back to the hotel, I set up the CinemaPam road show, but my roommates were tired. I wanted to stay up and watch *something*, but didn't have quite enough in me for a whole movie, so I settled for a rewatch of an episode of Hannibal ("Antipasto" - still trying to figure out what was the deal with all the snails in S3).
FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 4
The next morning we availed ourselves of the hotel's free breakfast (hurray, waffles!). Then we went to the campus for the morning seminars about the previous day's performances. Fred Adams joined the woman who regularly leads the seminars (whose name I've tragically forgotten!) to talk about Shrew for the first seminar, and the second seminar was on the plays in the other theater -- the performance of South Pacific that we'd seen, as well as the performance of Amadeus that was going on while we were in Shrew. These were interesting, but hard on the kiester, as we had to sit on metal benches and the cushions only help so much after a couple of hours.
For lunch, we visited The Grind, a local coffee place that also sells gourmet sandwiches. We took our food to go and enjoyed the table and chairs sitting outside our room. After lunch, we had just enough time to fire up the projector and watch an episode of Slings & Arrows (which, if you haven't seen it, you REALLY SHOULD -- the first two seasons are on Hulu, so you have no excuse!) before going to the matinee of Charley's Aunt.
Charley's Aunt
This ... was not my favorite. I had attempted to read the play first, but I soon realized that it is not a play for reading and that the only purpose for it being in print is for the benefit of people who are actually putting it on the stage. I enjoy a good farce, and this one is fairly good, if dated. But mistaken identities -- particularly when they involve cross-dressing -- are often painfully uncomfortable, and never more so than when it's a man in drag and his "femininity" is played as a joke. I've lost a lot of my enjoyment of that kind of thing.
That said, it was still quite entertaining, and the cast was clearly having a blast playing these over-the-top characters, particularly Michael Doherty, who played Babberly (and posed as the eponymous aunt) and Andy Baldeschwiler, who played the deadpan manservant Brassett. I probably would have enjoyed it more had I not been struck with a bit of "restless leg" in the first act. I did geek out pretty hard at the use of the Eton Boating Song just before the first and third acts. I wouldn't have taken notice of it, except that a version of it with different lyrics was used in a horror film called Society that I discovered and fell head over heels in love with last year. (Incidentally, I think the newer version of the song should be Donald Trump's campaign theme song.)
Between plays, we met Emily's parents (who had driven down to see South Pacific) for dinner at a yummy Mexican place. The Greenshow was doing their "Irish night" show, which I suppose was the closest fit for Lear. There were lots of emotional moments over the weekend, but maybe my favorite was when one of the singers got particularly choked up performing Bob Dylan's "Tomorrow Is a Long Time."
King Lear
I had never seen this play performed (I missed the Central Park production a couple years ago with John Lithgow), except for the snippets from Season 3 of Slings & Arrows. During the performance, I kept finding myself matching the actors to who played their characters in S&A. Tony Amendola was a lovely Lear, but he seemed far too spry and hearty to be the frail old king. Cordelia and Regan were great, but the standout among the sisters was Goneril (played by Melinda Pfundstein). David Pichette was wonderful as the Fool (he may be my favorite actor that I saw this year). Brendan Marshall-Rashid, who we'd seen as Jack Chesney in Charley's Aunt in the afternoon, was an incredible (and diabolically sexy) Edmund. And Tyler Pierce was a wonderful (and amazingly ripped) Edgar/Poor Tom.
I really liked the harsh, minimalist stage design, which was apparently inspired by Game of Thrones. The gouging of Gloucester's eyes was HORRIFYING, especially for a stage production where you know there's only so much they can do with an audience right there. And once again, there were clearly people in the audience who were not familiar with the play AT ALL and were not quite prepared for what they saw (there seemed to be more response to Edmund/Goneril and Edmund/Regan than to any of the violence).
After the play, there was another ceremony -- this time to say goodbye to tragedy, as this evening was the last performance of a tragedy on this stage. David Ivers (one of the artistic directors who is also an actor and director at the festival -- he directed Charley's Aunt and played Salieri in Amadeus) opened and closed this one. Unfortunately, he used so many great quotes from Hamlet in his remarks that, when the time came for one of the other actors to quote a line from that play and blow out their candle, they ended up using "To thine own self be true," which is certainly iconic but I would have preferred something more meaningful than one of Polonius's empty platitudes.
SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 5
Breakfast again at the hotel before heading to the morning seminars. During the Lear discussion, someone asked why it was that Goneril and Regan were so easily seduced by Edmund, and our moderator basically said "surprise, women can experience lust too" while the women in the audience nodded vigorously. I didn't stick around for the seminars on Charley's Aunt and South Pacific and instead went back to the hotel to rest some more (and make a trip to the ATM).
When Susan and Emily returned from the later seminars, we order lunch from Jersey Mike's (always a good decision). We headed over for the matinee of Amadeus just as Emily's football team (BYU) was starting its game against Nebraska and Susan's team (Rice) was starting its game against Wagner.
Amadeus
This was my favorite thing we saw this year. The film adaptation has always been one of my favorite movies, and I wondered if my familiarity with it would make it not as exciting. I hadn't gotten around to reading the play beforehand, so it was a delight to discover that playwright Peter Shaffer apparently had an incredible understanding of the difference between writing for the stage and writing for the screen. The play has a lot of the same beats, but not all of them, and the dialogue (apart from some key moments) is almost entirely different. The more abstract elements were occasionally a bit much for me (such as in the very beginning with the whispering and the back-and-forth with the venticelli) but I quickly forgot about that.
David Ivers was a great Salieri, and I kind of love how they don't really care that we have to see him change coats and wigs to go from his old self to his younger self as he's telling the story. He gave the role a good mix of gravity and humor. The running gag with the concealing chair and the obliging sugar creme or whatever was especially hilarious. Tasso Feldman was a serviceable Mozart, but that has always been the less interesting role to me. After all, the play is more about Mozart as Salieri saw him than about Mozart himself. The use of music is, of course, integral to the play, but I felt that several times it was played a touch too quietly. But that's a minor nitpick.
At the seminar the day before, the speaker told the story of Margaret Thatcher going to see Amadeus when it first opened, as she was a great admirer of Mozart. She was APPALLED at the crude language and wrote a sharp letter to Peter Shaffer, accusing him of character assassination. He responded by sending her (copies, I presume, of) letters that he had used as part of his research, written in Mozart's own hand, that proved he really was a vulgar man who talked a lot about bodily functions and farts and poop humor. Thatcher still wouldn't believe it, even when holding the evidence in her hand.
Dinner was to be at a new Italian place, but when we got there, they told us that without a reservation it would be at least a thirty-minute wait (despite that there were several empty tables in sight), and we didn't have that kind of time. So we went across the street to Market Grill, which is a steak and burger place that's very good and not too fancy.
The final Greenshow was "English night" and I'm afraid I don't remember very much about it. I was so ready for Henry IV Part 2. I'd read the play, plus the previous two plays in the "Henriad," and there was no way I was going to be lost or confused. And as a result, I really really enjoyed it.
Henry IV Part 2
I can't believe this play is so rarely performed and considered a "throw-away" play. I actually prefer it to Part 1, though that's partly because I'm not a huge fan of Falstaff and I like him more when he elicits sympathy than when he's cavalierly sending his pitiful soldiers to be "food for powder."
Sam Ashdown (Hal), Larry Bull (King Henry) and John Ahlin (Falstaff) were wonderful. My fave David Pichette had a couple of lovely scenes as Justice Shallow, including one of my favorite scenes (the "chimes at midnight" scene). A standout among the minor players was Bree Murphy, who doubled as Mistress Quickly and Lady Northumberland. My favorite scene in the play (when Hal thinks his father is dead and takes the crown) was exceedingly well done. I had been disappointed in how it was played in The Hollow Crown, with Henry hitting his son and making a show of anger when he should be hurt. But this was perfect, particularly Hal's speech about doing battle with the crown.
There was a great Falstaff moment where he's sitting on the floor and has to get up, and he goes through the most amazing sequence of trying to get up off the ground that I'd ever seen. It reminded me of trying to get up off the air mattress a few nights before.
After the play (which actually ended with the opening line of Henry V - "O for a muse of fire"), it was time for the final ceremony -- goodbye to histories. This was the last history play to be performed on this stage, as well as the last play to be performed there, period. The ceremony was led by Brian Vaughn, who is co-artistic director with David Ivers. He had directed tonight's play, and Emily remarked that he has always had a special affinity for the history plays. I was excited that the Henriad quotes were all in their right order and that Larry Bull said the Henry IV Part 2 line ("Uneasy lies the head that wears the crown.") just before Sam Ashdown, who will play Henry V next season, delivered the Henry V quote. And they picked a wonderful quote for Richard II ("This blessed plot, this earth, this realm, this England."). Between the end of the play and the ceremony, we were all given special flashlight keychains, and after the lines had been said, Brian handed the ceremonial candle to Fred Adams, and we all walked the light over to the site of the new theater to kind of bless the space.
SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 6
I sat out the seminars again to pack. As I was flying American instead of Southwest, I wanted to get everything down to carry on luggage and avoid the checked bag fee, and that took some time. We had a slightly late check-out and hit the road, but not before going back to the campus and taking pictures on the Shakespeare bench.
wahlee_98 getting her Doll Tearsheet on.
Whilewahlee_98 drove back to SLC, angua9 and I were off to Las Vegas to catch our flights home. Stopping only for the Slowest Lunch Ever at a Denny's in St. George, we made good time, accompanied by my mega-mix (we didn't make it quite as far into it this time; once we hit "Shalom" from Milk and Honey, I skipped way ahead to the more familiar "I've Decided to Marry You" from Gentleman's Guide to Love and Murder).
We split up to go through security (I got to do the super-fast line and didn't even have to take my laptop out!) and met back up at the gate whereangua9 was leaving from. We hung out for a bit longer, and after angua9 boarded her flight, I had another EIGHT HOURS until my flight left. I passed the time writing some of this post, grabbing dinner at Pei Wei (which I can't get in NYC), and tweaking my mega-mix for maximum enjoyment and OCD-ness. I started it over about an hour before boarding the plane and, by the time I changed planes at O'Hare, landed at LaGuardia, picked up my bags, took the two buses home, dodged the men in the apartment laying down new flooring, and crashed in my room, I'd just made it to the 80s ("The Lullaby of Broadway" from 42nd Street).
I'm so glad I got to go this year (thanks again,angua9 and wahlee_98!). There's probably no way I can go next year (if I go anywhere other than BNAT and TN, it'll hopefully be LeakyCon), but the great plays and the special occasion of the last plays in the Adams made this a great year to go.
For a while it looked like I wasn't going to be able to go this year, for reasons I won't go into, but I hadn't counted on
angua9 and wahlee_98 being such amazing friends. Once it was clear I was definitely going to be able to go, I started to get crazy prepared. I always *try* to read all the plays we're going to see, but I'd never gotten around to a pre-fest read of any of them until now. I still didn't get to all of them, but I came pretty close and was quite proud of myself. Since one of the plays we were seeing was Henry IV Part 2, and since I'm not confident in my comprehension of the histories, I went a little overboard and read the entire Henriad and watched The Hollow Crown (the BBC four-part miniseries that covers all four plays -- Richard II, both parts of Henry IV and Henry V). Danged if I was going to be lost watching any of these plays!As it's MUCH easier to fly into either Salt Lake City or Las Vegas and just drive to Cedar City, I spent the evening before the festival in SLC with
wahlee_98 and her family. I grinned as we passed the Denny's where our deep discussion of Bonnie Wright's performance in Prisoner of Azkaban took place during Wahleecon. There was watching of Mister Rogers Neighborhood on Netflix and Nero Wolfe on DVD. And on the way to Cedar City the next morning, I forced wahlee_98 to listen to my musical theater mega-mix -- a 16-hour 234-song playlist of songs from every major musical (and some obscure ones) from the 1920s to the present, including nearly all (or as many as I could find songs for) musicals nominated for the Best Musical Tony award. No, we didn't come close to listening to all of it, as we arrived in Cedar City somewhere around the mid-60s ("Hello Dolly").We met Susan for lunch at her favorite diner ... that one she can't remember the name of but it's a diner on Main Street. Turns out it was called Main Street Grill. After lunch, we headed to the SUU campus for our first play.
South Pacific
First off, kudos to whoever cast actual Tonkinese children to play Emile's son and daughter. That can't be an easy find in southern Utah. This was an incredible production, on par with the recent Broadway revival. Michael Scott Harris was a wonderful Emile (with an amazing voice) and Allie Babich was a great Nellie. Nigel Huckle was a standout as well, playing Cable, and is not only a very fine tenor but can also fill a pair of khakis. Just saying. Aaron Galligan-Stierle (Billis) was one of my favorite things about every production he was in (he was also in Shrew and Henry IV Part 2), and was fantastic here. Christine Jugueta was a better Bloody Mary when she was singing, but sometimes her line delivery bordered on icky stereotype. There were people in our audience who clearly had never seen the play before, because there were gasps of shock when Liat took Cable's shirt off. Come on, people.
South Pacific is not my *absolute* favorite favorite Rodgers & Hammerstein musical, but it's close. (I still prefer The Sound of Music, but that musical is so bound up in the superb film version for me that I can't possibly look at it on its own.) It's boggling to me that people think the racial element is no longer relevant. Do these people ever watch the news??? "You've Got to Be Carefully Taught," though it's a short and fairly simple tune, still wrecks me because we are still unlearning that garbage over 65 years later. Case in point, today's news of a 14-year-old brown-skinned child who was arrested for BUILDING A CLOCK.
Between plays, we checked into our room, which was furnished with a queen bed for each of us. For dinner, we tried a new woodfired pizza place, which was yummy but a little highbrow for me. Before the evening's play, we went to the "orientation," where the director, Fred Adams, talked a bit about it. He had directed a production of Shrew back in the early days of the festival (the 60s, I think?) and described it as the most misogynistic piece of crap you'd ever seen. He said his goal for this production was to make it a love story. He pointed out that the story was set in Padua, which was an intellectual mecca of Italy (Lucentio comes there for the express purpose of studying, after all, before he gets sidetracked) and argued that "I've come to wive it wealthily in Padua" was "locker room talk" and that what Petruchio was actually looking for was an intellectual wife.
After the orientation we went out to the lawn to watch the Greenshow, a 30-40 minute pre-show of songs and skits that sort of fit the evening's play. Tonight was "Italian night" - a fitting choice for Shrew - and as we found seats on the lawn the performers were singing "We Open in Venice" from Kiss Me, Kate. There was also dancing around a maypole, and some audience members were brought on stage to "stomp grapes" and make wine, though I'm fairly certain none of their feet ever touched an actual grape.
At the conclusion of the Greenshow, a trumpet fanfare signaled to everyone to make their way to the Adams Theatre, the open-air Globe Theatre replica where all the Shakespeare plays are performed each season. It is such an authentic replica, in fact, that the BBC filmed part of its Shakespeare series there. This was a special weekend for the theatre, because it was the last weekend of performances in the Adams before they shut it down permanently (next season the main stage will be the still-in-progress Engelstad Theatre).
I think this is technically from Lear, but it's the best stage-side shot of the theatre.
Each of the performances we attended concluded with a special ceremony to mark the closing of the nearly forty-year-old space. But I'm getting ahead of myself. First, the play.
The Taming of the Shrew
It's not like this play doesn't have its problems, but I have long thought it was very misunderstood and unfairly maligned (yes, including Katherine's final speech). If you want to read Petruchio as boorish, fine, but he's not abusive. He never once lays a hand on Katherine in violence. And Katherine, for her part, has a lot of behaviors that, however understandable her motives are, need to be ... worked on.
I've seen several versions of this play, and while I adore 10 Things I Hate About You, it is obviously a transformed version of the play (Kat, in that version, at least has *one* friend, Bianca is a good deal more tolerable, and then there's Allison Janney). This production was my favorite stage version of the play that I've seen, and it had probably the strongest ensemble cast of anything we saw at the festival this year. Leading the cast were Brian Vaughn (the Best Ever Hamlet) and his real-life wife Melinda Pfundstein (who played Jane Bennett in the P&P adaptation I saw a few years back and played Goneril in this year's King Lear). Both of them were really wonderful, and I especially loved how knocked-off-his-feet-by-Katherine that Brian played Petruchio. Gremio (the old pantaloon figure) is not a character I'm terribly interested in usually, but David Pichette made him actually fun to watch (he was another favorite in everything he was in). We'd seen Aaron Galligan-Stierle as Billis in South Pacific and he was a brilliant Grumio (why does this pay have a Grumio *and* a Gremio?!). There was an extended comic bit where he tries to light a fire that was brilliant.
There was an unplanned bit of comedy in Act IV when, during a quiet moment in the action, an "alarum" in the form of a car alarm rang out and interrupted the scene. All the actors tried valiantly to go ahead with the scene, but the alarm kept honking and it just got more and more hilarious, especially as the audience and the actors started feeding off each other's laughter. Melinda Pfundstein was literally on the floor, hiding her face (and we learned the next day that she was mortified that she'd been unprofessional enough to crack in that situation).
After the final bows, the Executive Director (R. Scott Phillips) took to the stage to explain about the ceremony that was soon to take place -- a sort of farewell to comedy, as this was the last Shakespeare comedy to be performed in the Adams Theatre. He did this the next two nights as well, and each night he got choked up (as did most people in the theater, including the actors on stage). Once Scott finished his bit, the actors from the play, along with Fred Adams (not actually the theatre's namesake), came on stage. Adams read an introductory speech, thick with quotes from Shakespeare's comedies, and then the actors recited an iconic line from each of the comedies (most of them Shakespeare's, but not all) that had been performed on that stage.
When we got back to the hotel, I set up the CinemaPam road show, but my roommates were tired. I wanted to stay up and watch *something*, but didn't have quite enough in me for a whole movie, so I settled for a rewatch of an episode of Hannibal ("Antipasto" - still trying to figure out what was the deal with all the snails in S3).
FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 4
The next morning we availed ourselves of the hotel's free breakfast (hurray, waffles!). Then we went to the campus for the morning seminars about the previous day's performances. Fred Adams joined the woman who regularly leads the seminars (whose name I've tragically forgotten!) to talk about Shrew for the first seminar, and the second seminar was on the plays in the other theater -- the performance of South Pacific that we'd seen, as well as the performance of Amadeus that was going on while we were in Shrew. These were interesting, but hard on the kiester, as we had to sit on metal benches and the cushions only help so much after a couple of hours.
For lunch, we visited The Grind, a local coffee place that also sells gourmet sandwiches. We took our food to go and enjoyed the table and chairs sitting outside our room. After lunch, we had just enough time to fire up the projector and watch an episode of Slings & Arrows (which, if you haven't seen it, you REALLY SHOULD -- the first two seasons are on Hulu, so you have no excuse!) before going to the matinee of Charley's Aunt.
Charley's Aunt
This ... was not my favorite. I had attempted to read the play first, but I soon realized that it is not a play for reading and that the only purpose for it being in print is for the benefit of people who are actually putting it on the stage. I enjoy a good farce, and this one is fairly good, if dated. But mistaken identities -- particularly when they involve cross-dressing -- are often painfully uncomfortable, and never more so than when it's a man in drag and his "femininity" is played as a joke. I've lost a lot of my enjoyment of that kind of thing.
That said, it was still quite entertaining, and the cast was clearly having a blast playing these over-the-top characters, particularly Michael Doherty, who played Babberly (and posed as the eponymous aunt) and Andy Baldeschwiler, who played the deadpan manservant Brassett. I probably would have enjoyed it more had I not been struck with a bit of "restless leg" in the first act. I did geek out pretty hard at the use of the Eton Boating Song just before the first and third acts. I wouldn't have taken notice of it, except that a version of it with different lyrics was used in a horror film called Society that I discovered and fell head over heels in love with last year. (Incidentally, I think the newer version of the song should be Donald Trump's campaign theme song.)
Between plays, we met Emily's parents (who had driven down to see South Pacific) for dinner at a yummy Mexican place. The Greenshow was doing their "Irish night" show, which I suppose was the closest fit for Lear. There were lots of emotional moments over the weekend, but maybe my favorite was when one of the singers got particularly choked up performing Bob Dylan's "Tomorrow Is a Long Time."
King Lear
I had never seen this play performed (I missed the Central Park production a couple years ago with John Lithgow), except for the snippets from Season 3 of Slings & Arrows. During the performance, I kept finding myself matching the actors to who played their characters in S&A. Tony Amendola was a lovely Lear, but he seemed far too spry and hearty to be the frail old king. Cordelia and Regan were great, but the standout among the sisters was Goneril (played by Melinda Pfundstein). David Pichette was wonderful as the Fool (he may be my favorite actor that I saw this year). Brendan Marshall-Rashid, who we'd seen as Jack Chesney in Charley's Aunt in the afternoon, was an incredible (and diabolically sexy) Edmund. And Tyler Pierce was a wonderful (and amazingly ripped) Edgar/Poor Tom.
I really liked the harsh, minimalist stage design, which was apparently inspired by Game of Thrones. The gouging of Gloucester's eyes was HORRIFYING, especially for a stage production where you know there's only so much they can do with an audience right there. And once again, there were clearly people in the audience who were not familiar with the play AT ALL and were not quite prepared for what they saw (there seemed to be more response to Edmund/Goneril and Edmund/Regan than to any of the violence).
After the play, there was another ceremony -- this time to say goodbye to tragedy, as this evening was the last performance of a tragedy on this stage. David Ivers (one of the artistic directors who is also an actor and director at the festival -- he directed Charley's Aunt and played Salieri in Amadeus) opened and closed this one. Unfortunately, he used so many great quotes from Hamlet in his remarks that, when the time came for one of the other actors to quote a line from that play and blow out their candle, they ended up using "To thine own self be true," which is certainly iconic but I would have preferred something more meaningful than one of Polonius's empty platitudes.
SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 5
Breakfast again at the hotel before heading to the morning seminars. During the Lear discussion, someone asked why it was that Goneril and Regan were so easily seduced by Edmund, and our moderator basically said "surprise, women can experience lust too" while the women in the audience nodded vigorously. I didn't stick around for the seminars on Charley's Aunt and South Pacific and instead went back to the hotel to rest some more (and make a trip to the ATM).
When Susan and Emily returned from the later seminars, we order lunch from Jersey Mike's (always a good decision). We headed over for the matinee of Amadeus just as Emily's football team (BYU) was starting its game against Nebraska and Susan's team (Rice) was starting its game against Wagner.
Amadeus
This was my favorite thing we saw this year. The film adaptation has always been one of my favorite movies, and I wondered if my familiarity with it would make it not as exciting. I hadn't gotten around to reading the play beforehand, so it was a delight to discover that playwright Peter Shaffer apparently had an incredible understanding of the difference between writing for the stage and writing for the screen. The play has a lot of the same beats, but not all of them, and the dialogue (apart from some key moments) is almost entirely different. The more abstract elements were occasionally a bit much for me (such as in the very beginning with the whispering and the back-and-forth with the venticelli) but I quickly forgot about that.
David Ivers was a great Salieri, and I kind of love how they don't really care that we have to see him change coats and wigs to go from his old self to his younger self as he's telling the story. He gave the role a good mix of gravity and humor. The running gag with the concealing chair and the obliging sugar creme or whatever was especially hilarious. Tasso Feldman was a serviceable Mozart, but that has always been the less interesting role to me. After all, the play is more about Mozart as Salieri saw him than about Mozart himself. The use of music is, of course, integral to the play, but I felt that several times it was played a touch too quietly. But that's a minor nitpick.
At the seminar the day before, the speaker told the story of Margaret Thatcher going to see Amadeus when it first opened, as she was a great admirer of Mozart. She was APPALLED at the crude language and wrote a sharp letter to Peter Shaffer, accusing him of character assassination. He responded by sending her (copies, I presume, of) letters that he had used as part of his research, written in Mozart's own hand, that proved he really was a vulgar man who talked a lot about bodily functions and farts and poop humor. Thatcher still wouldn't believe it, even when holding the evidence in her hand.
Dinner was to be at a new Italian place, but when we got there, they told us that without a reservation it would be at least a thirty-minute wait (despite that there were several empty tables in sight), and we didn't have that kind of time. So we went across the street to Market Grill, which is a steak and burger place that's very good and not too fancy.
The final Greenshow was "English night" and I'm afraid I don't remember very much about it. I was so ready for Henry IV Part 2. I'd read the play, plus the previous two plays in the "Henriad," and there was no way I was going to be lost or confused. And as a result, I really really enjoyed it.
Henry IV Part 2
I can't believe this play is so rarely performed and considered a "throw-away" play. I actually prefer it to Part 1, though that's partly because I'm not a huge fan of Falstaff and I like him more when he elicits sympathy than when he's cavalierly sending his pitiful soldiers to be "food for powder."
Sam Ashdown (Hal), Larry Bull (King Henry) and John Ahlin (Falstaff) were wonderful. My fave David Pichette had a couple of lovely scenes as Justice Shallow, including one of my favorite scenes (the "chimes at midnight" scene). A standout among the minor players was Bree Murphy, who doubled as Mistress Quickly and Lady Northumberland. My favorite scene in the play (when Hal thinks his father is dead and takes the crown) was exceedingly well done. I had been disappointed in how it was played in The Hollow Crown, with Henry hitting his son and making a show of anger when he should be hurt. But this was perfect, particularly Hal's speech about doing battle with the crown.
There was a great Falstaff moment where he's sitting on the floor and has to get up, and he goes through the most amazing sequence of trying to get up off the ground that I'd ever seen. It reminded me of trying to get up off the air mattress a few nights before.
After the play (which actually ended with the opening line of Henry V - "O for a muse of fire"), it was time for the final ceremony -- goodbye to histories. This was the last history play to be performed on this stage, as well as the last play to be performed there, period. The ceremony was led by Brian Vaughn, who is co-artistic director with David Ivers. He had directed tonight's play, and Emily remarked that he has always had a special affinity for the history plays. I was excited that the Henriad quotes were all in their right order and that Larry Bull said the Henry IV Part 2 line ("Uneasy lies the head that wears the crown.") just before Sam Ashdown, who will play Henry V next season, delivered the Henry V quote. And they picked a wonderful quote for Richard II ("This blessed plot, this earth, this realm, this England."). Between the end of the play and the ceremony, we were all given special flashlight keychains, and after the lines had been said, Brian handed the ceremonial candle to Fred Adams, and we all walked the light over to the site of the new theater to kind of bless the space.
SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 6
I sat out the seminars again to pack. As I was flying American instead of Southwest, I wanted to get everything down to carry on luggage and avoid the checked bag fee, and that took some time. We had a slightly late check-out and hit the road, but not before going back to the campus and taking pictures on the Shakespeare bench.
wahlee_98 getting her Doll Tearsheet on.While
wahlee_98 drove back to SLC, angua9 and I were off to Las Vegas to catch our flights home. Stopping only for the Slowest Lunch Ever at a Denny's in St. George, we made good time, accompanied by my mega-mix (we didn't make it quite as far into it this time; once we hit "Shalom" from Milk and Honey, I skipped way ahead to the more familiar "I've Decided to Marry You" from Gentleman's Guide to Love and Murder).We split up to go through security (I got to do the super-fast line and didn't even have to take my laptop out!) and met back up at the gate where
angua9 was leaving from. We hung out for a bit longer, and after angua9 boarded her flight, I had another EIGHT HOURS until my flight left. I passed the time writing some of this post, grabbing dinner at Pei Wei (which I can't get in NYC), and tweaking my mega-mix for maximum enjoyment and OCD-ness. I started it over about an hour before boarding the plane and, by the time I changed planes at O'Hare, landed at LaGuardia, picked up my bags, took the two buses home, dodged the men in the apartment laying down new flooring, and crashed in my room, I'd just made it to the 80s ("The Lullaby of Broadway" from 42nd Street).I'm so glad I got to go this year (thanks again,
angua9 and wahlee_98!). There's probably no way I can go next year (if I go anywhere other than BNAT and TN, it'll hopefully be LeakyCon), but the great plays and the special occasion of the last plays in the Adams made this a great year to go.