Dachs Thoughts

Tonight I saw my final play in my visit to the Colorado Shakespeare Festival, an original practices production of The Comedy of Errors. In the past, with the original practices productions they usually do lesser known plays. This time they decided to do one of the more commonly produced plays. These OP productions are always a little rough, which is what makes them fun. The cast has less preparation than in a normal production, and they have a que help on stage to help guide them. This was a funny play, and the cast obviously had fun with this approach. There were almost no errors in the first half, then people started forgetting lines and stepping over each other, which makes it exciting. They even called back some lines from other plays they’re doing in the season.

It was the coolest night of my visit, and during the first half we got a light steady rain for a while. But the play carried on. This was a very nice way to end my short visit.
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Tonight I saw another Shakespeare classic at the Colorado Shakespeare Festival, King Lear. This was a heavy sad play that was very well acted. The one twist was they had a woman playing King Lear (but as a male, not female). The bad guys were extremely bad. I had forgotten how awful the two daughters Goneril and Regan were, but these two were well played to the hilt. The double dealing servants were very smarmy.

Overall the production was very effective. The actress playing Lear played the mental and physical deterioration affecting him, and her grief in the final scene when Cordelia is reveled as dead was powerful. The role of Lear is always tricky for me. They have to represent a long serving successful and powerful king who gives up his power in old age. The issue I had with this actor was that while I could see the deterioration played well, I never really saw her as the once powerful and formidable king. But that’s a minor picking point. All in all an enjoyable play and a nice night out for theater.
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On night three of my trip to the Colorado Shakespeare Festival I saw my second Shakespeare play, The Winter's Tale. This was another indoor play and overall it was quite good. The first half was excellent, with a serious solemn story well acted. I very much enjoyed it.

The second half, where the scene switches from Sicilia to Bohemia, the tone of the play changed dramatically. It’s normally supposed to be different, but as has been a theme in the three plays I’ve seen so far this year, they really pushed the comic aspects over the top. The actor who played the thief, Autolycus, was very hammy (in the vein of Snidely Whiplash), as he was in the previous day’s play. There it didn’t seem so bad since that was a farce. But here it seemed way too much. Not only was his performance too hammy for me, but he seemed to dominate the story of the second half, which I don’t recall being the balance in the play.

Apart from that annoyance, they brought it back to Sicilia and wrapped up the play beautifully. All in all I enjoyed it. I hope I’m not just getting crabby unable to enjoy humor.
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I left my house in the morning and traveled to Denver, in what turned out to be a more tightly scheduled trip than I had desired. I drove up to Boulder, quickly checked in to my hotel, and then immediately attended the first play of my visit at the Colorado Shakespeare Festival (I didn’t even have time to eat all day). I saw another production of Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing (less than two weeks after seeing SPARC’s production of the same play).

As usual with the Colorado Shakespeare Festival performances, the acting and production were very good. This production was a little less abbreviated than the last one I saw in Livermore, but the scenes with the constables and guard were not overly long and mildly entertaining. The overall setting seemed to be Italy, but with a 1920s flapper-motif underlying it. There were two aspects that I didn’t love: the characters of Benedick and Beatrice were played for broad comedy being quite over the top, and silly — which was a bit much for me; and there was too much breaking of the 4th wall, pandering to the audience.

Besides these shortcomings, perhaps accentuated by the fact that I’d just seen another version of the play, it was a very enjoyable evening and first play of the run. And there were even a few sprinkling drops of rain.
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After a very warm day, tonight I again joined Bob in attending the second play of SPARC’s season, Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing. It’s a fun play with a serious middle but happy ending, with a lot of witty banter in the dialog. The small cast (many of whom played multiple parts) did a good job carrying off the production. This was an “adaptation” which cut the play’s time down a bit, but I was happy that they cut out a lot of the “comedy” provided by the constable and town watch. There was just enough to carry the story forward with out getting annoying. It was interesting that a lot of the early banter between Beatrice and Benedict was a little less rapid than some seasoned actors do it, but it actually made it easier to catch some of the barbs and jokes. Overall, a very nice production, and a nice warm evening among the vines to enjoy it.
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