This afternoon I made the harrowing trek down to Santa Cruz to see a rarely preformed non-canon Shakespeare play. This was Santa Cruz Shakespeare’s “fringe” production of The Two Noble Kinsmen. By fringe, they mean this is a production put on by the season’s acting interns. This play was not in the First Folio and hence is non-canon, but is considered to have been co-written by Shakespeare and John Fletcher, a younger contemporary of Shakespeare’s who took over his role in the production company after he died.
The set was fairly sparse, and the play was set in the American west. As this was an apprentice play, all the parts were played by just five actors. Overall it was quite good. A few times it got confusing as an actor would switch roles and I wasn’t always following who was who. Also, there was a little bit of slipping into/out of western/southern accents. Even though the western setting was a little strange, the story was adequately conveyed. I guess technically this was a tragi-comedy as there was a death, but overall things worked out. I’m glad I got to see this play and now I can check it off my list.
I went down a bit early to avoid the rush hour traffic around San Jose, but I was again reminded why I hate driving down Hwy 17. Going down mid-afternoon was manageable, but coming back at night, there was major construction on the very windy and unseparated part of the road, and it was very much white-knuckle driving for me. The lights from the oncoming traffic nearly blocked my vision in certain points. Nevertheless I survived, but it reinforced my desire to limit my visitations to Santa Cruz.
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