All's Well That Ends Well....

***Before reading this post, please refer to the previous post (July 11th) and remember to vote for the LEMON TARTS!!!!

After Eileen and I loaded the gazebo into my truck, I finally got on the road to head home after a fabulous time at the Shakespeare Festival. As I have stated many times before, I love this drive! I think Southern Utah/Northern AZ have the most beautiful scenery almost anywhere!

I was a good girl and didn’t buy any cookies at Jacob’s Lake Inn (only because I still had some from when I bought some coming up to Cedar!), but I HIGHLY recommend them. They are seriously the best cookies on the earth!!!!

Then I got to my favorite part of the trip and that is the Vermillion Cliffs. I know I post pictures of this every time I go past them but here are some again. They look different all the time, depending on the weather, time of day and the lighting. They are breathtakingly beautiful! Enjoy!

Navajo Bridge that spans the Colorado River below

So that ends my “play by play” of our trip to the Utah Shakespeare Festival of 2010. I already can’t wait for next year! The plays they are doing next year are:

A Midsummer Night’s Dream

Richard III

Romeo and Juliet

Music Man

The Glass Menagerie

Noises Off!

I know I will be seeing at least 5 of the 6 plays next summer. Check out their web-site at:   www.bard.org/index.html

Can You Go Wrong with Jane Austen and Shakespeare on the Same Day? Play #4

Yesterday was a bit of a "relax" day for Eileen and I. We didn't have any sight-seeing planned so we had a late morning breakfast at IHop (what is a trip without at least once having breakfast at IHop?), came back to the Hotel at read by the pool for a while before it was time to go to our last play which was in the afternoon.

Yes, this is me with my Jane Austen action figure!  Is that cool or what????

….I interrupt this post with an emergency request. PLEASE contact the Festival here and let them know not to get rid of the LEMON TARTS for next year!!! They were taking a survey when we went to our play today to see which flavor should be dropped for next year. The lemon tarts are our favorites, and trust me, they are the best. So even if you don’t plan on EVER coming to the Utah Shakespeare Festival, please email them at:   www.bard.org/about/contact.html


PLEASE HELP US SAVE THE LEMONE TARTS!! Vote to get rid of the cream cheese tarts, YUCK!!!

Now back to our review…

Yesterday was also our last play and we thought we would save the best for last. The play was “Pride and Prejudice”, by Jane Austen. Last year when we found out that this particular play was going to be done we thought, “What could be more perfect, Jane Austen and Shakespeare altogether?” So we were very excited to see this play! So maybe that was part of the problem.

Us, with my Jane Austen action figure awaiting the play!

Let me begin by saying that we did enjoy this play but not as much as we expected. It IS worth seeing. The set was really beautiful and worked well with the show. Costumes were great, and all the actors gave really good performances. There were 2 standout performances. The best was Mrs. Bennet played by Ellen Crawford. Mrs. Bennet really has the best lines and is the most comical character in this play and in the book of “Pride and Prejudice”. Therefore it is EXTREMELY important to have a believable Mrs. Bennet and Crawford played her superbly! Even if it was just a facial expression, she had the audience laughing.

Brian Vaughn as Hamlet

The second best performance was, of course, Brian Vaughn as Mr. Collins. He played him perfectly. He had the awkward “holier than thou” attitude down to a tee! His social ineptitude also made you laugh at him while also being embarrassed for him for being so clueless! Vaughn also included enough annoying quirks as Mr. Collins that made him quite comical. He was fun to watch. Mr. Bennet (Jeff Steitzer) was also good and the 2 younger daughters, Kitty and Lydia were very silly which was fun and expected. The rest of the cast did very well and the story moved along quite nicely.

There were just a couple of things we did not like. Now I realize that this may have been because we both REALLY love this book, but we felt that Elizabeth was not portrayed in this play as the fun-loving, intellectually active character as she is in the book. Her sparing with Darcy seemed more like she was looking for a fight, instead of teasing him to point out his follies.

The other things were didn’t like was more a script problem than a performance problem. When Darcy first proposed to Elizabeth Bennet, the most famous line of this scene (at least in mine and Eileen’s opinion) was left out. We kept waiting for Lizzie to say,

``You are mistaken, Mr. Darcy, if you suppose that the mode of your declaration affected me in any other way, than as it spared me the concern which I might have felt in refusing you, had you behaved in a more gentleman-like manner.''

That line is almost as important and well-known as the opening lines of…”It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife.” This line WAS in the play.

The second problem we had with the script was near the end when Mr. Bennet was questioning Lizzie about accepting Mr. Darcy’s proposal. Elizabeth told her father how they were indebted to Mr. Darcy for “saving” Lydia’s, and therefore, the families reputation. You really felt that this was the main reason she wanted to marry Mr. Darcy, and not because she loved him dearly. But like I said, those two problems were script problems, but we felt that anyone that really “knew” Austen’s “P&P” would have changed these two oversights.

Mixed review???

So our review is YES, go see this play but be prepared if you know the book too well.

This was our last play but we ended the day with a great Western BBQ dinner at a new restaurant in town that was located in renovated train station called "Old West Smokehouse". YUMMY! Then we went back to the festival to buy our last tarts from our favorite tart guy, Stephen, and back to the Hotel to watch BBC’s “North and South”. YES!!!!!

Shakespeare and Austen figures, tart and North and South...can life get any better?

All four glorious hours of it! AWWWW, Richard Armitage!

cutie-patootie Richard Armitage

The perfect end to a fun day!!!

Tomorrow, the trip home and some pictures of the Vermillion Cliffs!  THE most beautiful place in the West!

"With mirth and laughter let old wrinkles come"- Play #3-The Merchant of Venice

How far that little candle throws his beams!  So shines a good deed in a naughty world. (The Merchant of Venice, 5. 1)

Have you ever noticed that if you are on a vacation and you don’t have an exact itinerary, you tend to start later each day? Thus it was yesterday and we and we didn’t really get started with the fun until the middle of the day. We did some window shopping…ok, yes did some buying also, in Cedar City then went to the crystal Inn and had High Tea. YUM!!!

I found a new favorite flavor…Spiced Chai. Can’t you just smell and taste the deliciousness of it just by the name??? It was tasty! Then we accidentally happened upon a fair in the city park. There was an interesting assortment of people at the fair...no, they were just weird! We didn’t stay too long.

We really wanted to get up to Cedar Breaks National Park. It is just up the canyon from Cedar City about 15 minutes away. It is absolutely breathtaking! I know I said this about Kolob Canyon but there is no other way to describe it. Here are a few pictures from various outlooks along the road:

There’s rosemary, that’s for remembrance; pray, love, remember, and there is pansies, that’s for thoughts…There’s fennel for you, and Columbines…(Hamlet4.5)

Eileen conversing with Billy Boy

Meanwhile, back at the Festival......

Tart boy...we kind of follow him around buying the amazing tarts!

Me visiting with David Ivers and Fred Adams before the show.

We were highly anticipating seeing The Merchant of Venice.

It is one of the best plays. I know I say that a lot about Shakespeare but this one is a gem! Here are a few of the best quotes from this play:
Nature hath framed strange fellows in her time. (1.1)
I do know of these
That therefore only are reputed wise
For saying nothing. (1.1)
They are as sick that surfeit with too much, as they that starve with nothing.(1.2)
The devil can cite Scripture for his purpose. (3.1)
It is a wise father that knows his own child. (2.2)
But love is blind, and lovers cannot see
The pretty follies that themselves commit. (2.6)
He is well paid that is well satisfied. (4.1)

I know you have heard of many of these, not knowing they were lines from Shakespeare. Those are just a few of the “shorter” gems in this play. Now for the review that I am sure you are all so eager to hear!

“Merchant” is probably one of the more controversial plays that Shakespeare penned because of one character and that character is Shylock, the Jew. I have blogged about my views of this play last year when I saw Southwest Shakespeare Co. perform it in Mesa. I still feel sorry for Shylock and the way the Jews were/are treated, so I won’t go into that commentary again (if you want to read it you can look in my post archives, April 2009).

This play was phenomenal! I think the two most important roles that you really need to have cast right are Shylock and Portia. This particular play was cast perfectly in these two parts. The part of Shylock was played magnificently by Tony Amendola.

He was so believable in the role as the shrewd businessman, the caring father, and as I stated, he was sick of being treated unfairly in Venice. I don’t condone revenge but sometimes you get pushed to that point where you don’t really think rationally and I think after being abused, losing his daughter, and being robbed by her, I think he was a broken man, and lashing out at the only thing he could and that was Antonio. That is why he was so unforgiving and would not back down on wanting his “pound of flesh” to pay back his bond!

Portia was played by Emily Trask. She has been in several shows at this Festival in the past and she was luminescent in this! She was perfect. You felt for her in the predicament that she didn’t have a choice in who she would get to marry. Instead she was bound by her dead father’s plan that her suitors must choose one chest out of three and whoever chose the correct one would win her hand. She had many humorous suitors and that is part of the fun of this play. But her best lines come at the trial of Antonio when she is masquerading as a “learned doctor” and dispensing justice. Also the scenes with Bassanio (Grant Goodman) are very sweet and romantic.

I could keep going on and on about how wonderful this production is but I will leave it by saying, this is another one you just can’t miss! Three out of three perfect plays, what more can you ask for? I will leave you with this last quote from the play:
Portia to Shylock--
The quality of mercy is not strained,
It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven
Upon the place beneath. It is twice blest:
It blesseth him that gives and him that takes.
'Tis mightiest in the mightiest: it becomes
The throned monarch better than his crown;
His sceptre shows the force of temporal power,
The attribute to awe and majesty,
Wherein doth sit the dread and fear of kings;
But mercy is above this sceptred sway,
It is enthroned in the hearts of kings,
It is an attribute to God himself;
And earthly power doth then show likest God's,
When mercy seasons justice. Therefore, Jew,
Though justice be thy plea, consider this,
That in the course of justice none of us
Should see salvation: we do pray for mercy;
And that same prayer doth teach us all to render
The deeds of mercy.
The Merchant of Venice, 4. 1

Play 2-FANTASTIC! But I Would Come Just For The Tarts

Now for the further adventures of Eileen, Billy boy and Me here on day 2 at the Festivaland the review of play #2.
Our play wasn’t until the evening so Eileen and I went to St. George for more “School supplies” (wink wink, remember the code words). While we were at one of the “supply” stores (Coldwter Creek), who would walk in but my son-in-law’s sweet mom, LaDawn, who was also visiting from Mesa. Here we’re almost 500 miles from Mesa and I see someone I know shopping! Freaky! Anyway, after that we grabbed a quick lunch at In-N-Out.

Then we went to a store that I have heard so much about but never been and it is called Tai Pan. WOW!!! I usually hate to shop but this store was amazing!

Billy Boy in front of the store, refreshed after falling in the fountain

I have been looking for a particular item to put in my garden for several months and I found one here. It is a gazebo! I can’t wait to get it home and reassemble it! Don’t tell my husband, he rarely comes in the back garden so it will probably be months before he ever knows it is there!

One the way back to Cedar City, we stopped at Kolob Canyon which is in the North end of Zion National Park. It is breathtakingly beautiful!

Here a few pictures of Billy Boy enjoying the scenery. Can you just imagine what Shakespeare would have written if he had seen scenery as beautiful as this?

Anyway, now for the review of the play. Last night we had our first Shakespeare play which was one of my favorites, Much Ado About Nothing.

To our delight, David Ivers (one of our favorites) was playing the role of Benedick. None of the other actors were familiar to us. I think it would be very hard not to enjoy this play since the writing is so good and hilarious, but this production was REALLY great. Beatrice was played amazingly by Kymberly Mellen, and her sparring with Benedick was entertaining. They were great together on stage. It is always surprising to me, to see how different actors will play a part that I have seen so many times before and it is always new and fun. Again, I think it goes back to the writing! Thanks William!!! I still think Claudio (Matt Tallman) is a twerp and that Hero (Sara J. Griffin) shouldn’t have taken him back after he publicly humiliated her based on lies and gossip, but oh well, she does every time I see this play so I have to accept it! I do think the actor that played Hero’s father Leonato (Robert Ramirez), would make a GREAT Othello. He was good in this but I kept “seeing” him as Othello. Another actor that deserves mention is Don Burroughs. He played the constable Dogberry. His “murder” of the English language was hilarious. Everything that came out of his mouth was wrong but we knew exactly what he meant it to mean. He was so funny. But the play was great and both Eileen and I thoroughly enjoyed every bit of it.

Scenes from the Green Show performers before the play starts

Oh, and did I mention the AMAZING tarts? We are on a 2 tarts a day habit now. More on those tomorrow.

Did We Start With the BEST????

Day 1 at Utah Shakespeare Festival-1st Play review

A couple of notes ahead of time. First, as a child, action figures weren’t really available, especially for girls, so when I first saw a “Shakespeare” action figure I knew I had to have one. So, he will be accompanying me as I show the sites, activities, and fun around this year’s festival. There will also be a surprise visit from another action figure sometime while we are here also!!! (Aren’t you sooooo excited and curious?)

Second, there are always 6 plays at the Festival. We are only seeing 4 of the 6. “Macbeth” and “Great Expectations” are the 2 we choose not to see and the reason for that is that there is no happy ending. I’m sorry, but we, my sister Eileen and I both NEED happy endings!!!

Since our first play wasn’t until 2:00 this afternoon I decided to go to St. George this morning to buy some “School Supplies” (for my husband’s sake that is what we will call them but I will call them clothes) for a trip I am taking later this month (more on that at a later date). My sister, Eileen, was driving down today and we eventually met up at out hotel. We had a quick lunch at the Pizza Company then headed for the first play which was entitled “The 39 Steps”.

The play was inside at the Randall Jones Theater. There are 3 theaters that are the venues for the 6 plays. We were excited as we looked at our programs to see that our 2 favorite actors, Brian Vaughn, and David Ivers were both in this play!!! The other 2 actors, Aaron Galligan-Stierle and Carol Linnea Johnson, were unfamiliar to us, but they were all FANTASTIC!!

I had seen on numerous occasions the Hitchcock movie version , and recently the PBS production of this story “The 39 Steps”, which are both suspenseful. I also saw this play recently with some friends at ASU so I was looking forward to comparing the 2 productions. Due to that, we went in with the basic idea of the story. The play however, although it follows basically the same story line as the films, is not at all like the suspenseful film versions, but is a very physical, and funny play.

It opens in London, in 1935, and the main character, Richard Hannay, who is played wonderfully by Brian Vaughn, is telling us about how bored he was with life, so he decides to go to the theater, and that is where his life changes and the adventures start. He unintentionally gets involved in a murder, espionage, kidnappings, and romance throughout the play, all while trying to protect his country from the villains who are trying to sneak out of the country a secret called the “39 steps”.

The other three actors play all the other roles, which are many, throughout the play, and there are many fast costume changes which add to the fun of this show. The adventures take us from London to Scotland and back to London for the climax of the story, and we meet many interesting and funny characters along the way. There is also a love story thrown in there for fun.

We both LOVED this show and I think it was even better than the production that I saw at ASU as part of their Broadway series.

The actors were all wonderful! We all three give it a thumbs up and recommend you come see it!!!

If you don’t “do” Shakespeare it is worth the trip here just to see this one play!

Billy boy posing with a statue of Titania outside of the theater

After the play, we hit the gift shops (YEA!!!), and then eventually hit our FAVORITE restaurant for dinner in Cedar City which is La Casa Don Miguel.

This is really the BEST Mexican food outside of Mesa AZ!!! YUM!

Then to end the perfect day, we watched my all time favorite Bollywood movie “Rab Na Bana di Jodi” back at the hotel (Eileen is so nice to do this for me!). Life is sooo sweet! Stayed tuned for another review tomorrow!