Tonight I saw another Shakespeare play, and another new festival for me. I saw Santa Cruz Shakespeare’s production of As You Like It. It was a bit of an adventure getting there, as I haven’t been to Santa Cruz in at least 20 years. The “theater” is on the UC Santa Cruz campus, which seems very spread out with lots of natural undeveloped land. It sits in a glen surrounded by redwood trees, a very nice setting reminiscent of John Hinkle park in Berkeley. The show was very well done, all of the acting top-notch. The staging was very spare, similar to CalShakes. The scenes in the duke’s palace just had blue and white curtains as a backdrop, but when it went to the forest of Arden, they pulled back the curtains, and the natural redwoods of the glen formed a perfect setting. By the time the play was over, the fog was settling in to the hills of the UCSC campus.
I hadn’t realized it when I got my ticket, but this was the opening night of the newly reconstituted Shakespeare festival. It had previously run for 32 years as part of UCSC, but last year they closed it down for budgetary reasons. So a separate group took up the challenge and manged to get it restarted, although they’re still leasing the theater space from the university. The glen was full on opening night, and it seemed like a enthusiastic, although laid-back crowd. I will certainly try to go back again.
This completed my unplanned mini-marathon, where I’ve seen 4 different Shakespeare plays, put on by 4 different festivals, in only 8 days. 107