A Future History

Posted on August 1, 2019 by djnpub

King Charles III, CoSFTonight I saw the next play in the Colorado Shakespeare Festival’s season, a Shakespeare-like play called King Charles III, which the author refers to as a future history play. It was written by Mike Bartlett in 2014. It imagines the premise that the current Queen of England, Elizabeth II, has died and her son the current Prince Charles has become king. On principle he tries to take a slightly more activist role as monarch and not just be a rubber stamp for the government.

It was interesting staging with a fairly fixed ornate set, but with graphic images on the back wall that periodically switched between royal portraits and newspaper images showing the building controversies. The acting was excellent, and the appearance of the cast, particularly of Prince William, appeared to closely match the real royal family.

This dealt with some interesting clashes between politics British-style and the monarchy, and between the generations of the royal family who each had their own agenda. It ended sad in my view as the initially principled Charles (who becomes a bit over tyrannical) is coerced into abdicating in favor of his son William who is more adept at playing the PR game, but who ultimately will just be a plastic image of a monarch.
Trailer

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Twelfth Night

Posted on July 31, 2019 by djnpub

Twelfth NightTonight I saw the first play in the Colorado Shakespeare Festival’s season, a wonderful production of Twelfth Night. It was a very warm night, and the play had a Caribbean tropical theme. They had a lot of action before the play actually started, pulling people up onto the stage for little bits, and I even got pulled up to “help them get their boat off the reef.” This was a really well done play, from the acted out dramatized wreck of the ship, to the broad comedy of the various scenes. The acting was very good, featuring some actors I’ve seen before.

Twelfth NightThe night before coming out I only got 3 hours of sleep, getting up early to come to the airport. On top of many short nights previously, and the high altitude and warm weather, I had to fight sleep during the first half of the play (no fault of the play). Fortunately with a cool night I could start to catch up on some much needed sleep. This play was a great way to start my week of Shakespeare, and I’m looking forward to the rest.
Trailer
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Complete Works

Posted on July 25, 2019 by djnpub

Complete WorksTonight I saw the second play of the Livermore Shakespeare Festival’s season, The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (abridged) [revised]. I again joined Bob and Blanca. This is a fast moving comedy featuring only three actors, that tries (sort-of) to spin through snippets of all of Shakespeare’s 37 plays in a little over an hour and a half. It has apparently been around for around 20 years. It was pretty much silly comedy. Some parts were funny, some parts were too silly (stupid) for me. One successful segment was when they brought two people up onto the stage (one of which was a little girl), then engaged the audience in three groups to call out lines ending with the little girl screaming. (It was all supposed to represent the mental turmoil that Ophelia was going through with Hamlet.) It was a fun, warm, evening, and I’m glad I went even if it wasn’t the greatest thing I’ve ever seen.

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One Giant Leap for Mankind

Posted on July 20, 2019 by djnpub

First stepsIt’s hard to believe it was 50 years ago, July 20, 1969, when man first landed on the moon. It’s one of the few vivid memories of my childhood. Just an adolescent, I had been an avid follower of the space program, and this was the culmination of that effort. It marked the greatest adventure that has occurred in my lifetime. It also makes me feel a little old.

USA flag on the moonI can’t seem to get enough of watching the coverage these days. The photographs and films are beautiful and in color, and I have to remember back when I was watching it all we had was black and white. The landing happened at 2:17 pm in the afternoon where I was with the famous line “Tranquility Base here, the Eagle has landed.” The first step onto the moon occurred at 8:56 pm, and the EVA lasted around 2 hours. I remember it well, as my family had gone over to my cousins’ house where we were helping them lay a tile floor in their unfinished basement. I distinctly remember working on that floor and watching the moon walk on a small B&W TV. As we drove home well after midnight, we could look up in the sky and see the moon, and were all amazed at what had just happened.

Apollo 11 crew

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To The Moon

Posted on July 16, 2019 by djnpub

Apollo 11 launch50 years ago today began the culmination of the greatest adventure that has occurred in my lifetime. Apollo 11 launched from Kennedy Space Center on the first ever attempt to land men on the moon.

I still get emotional thinking about this and about the landing 4 days later. With my early years of growing up in the 1960s, the space program was a huge part of my young life. It flowed out into popular culture in TV shows and movies, and was part of our science education. While we have subsequently been so saturated with movies of space travel it seems fairly mundane, but then it was the stuff of fantasy and imagination. I remember as a kid, you could write to NASA and get free posters and pictures, and each step towards the attempt was extremely exciting. The entire atmosphere around the space program, and science and technology in general, played no small part in my eventually going into science and engineering, although by the time I finally got out of school the space program had settled into a much lower profile activity. I was recently talking to a younger friend of mine who was born much after the moon landing, and they can’t relate to what it was like.

I think there is no more beautiful rocket launching than the Saturn V. I don’t know if that’s just because of what it represented, but I think there is a beautiful aesthetic to the design and paint job, and the way it took off slowly was just amazing. As a kid I built and flew Estes rockets, and I still have my model Saturn V sitting on my dresser. A couple of years ago during a trip to Florida, I was able to visit Kennedy Space Center, and I when I got to the complex built around the Saturn V and the Apollo program, I found it very emotional to see, and I stayed there a long time.

The anniversary of the moon landing is just a few days off. It would be nice if something like that could capture the national psyche again.

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Civil War Othello

Posted on July 13, 2019 by djnpub

LSF Othello 2019Tonight I saw the first play in Livermore Shakespeare Festival’s season, Othello. I joined Bob and Blanca on a relatively warm evening. While I always am frustrated by the theme of this play, it is very powerful. This production was very good. Interestingly it set the story at the later part of the Civil War, which kind of nicely fits in idea of the outsider black general. All the acting was good, though Iago wasn’t quite as viscerally evil as he did his dirty deeds. The scene were Desdemona was murdered was extremely long driving home the brutality of the act.
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Good Person

Posted on July 11, 2019 by djnpub

Good Person of SzechwanTonight I saw the 2nd play in this summer’s CalShakes season, Bertolt Brecht’s The Good Person of Szechwan. It was a relatively warm evening, and I made it up to Orinda in record time. I wasn’t sure what to expect as this is the first Brecht play I’ve seen. This was extremely well done, and well acted. The play is basically a meditation on what it is to be good, and questions how one can truly be good with all the natural pressures one has to be selfish just to survive. The cast floated seamlessly through multiple roles, and even though it was 3 hours, it didn’t seem to drag at all. It was punctuated throughout with some interesting music, and had a very strong moving ending. I’ve now had two very good plays in a row. Lets hope the next one holds up.

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As You Like It 𝅗𝅥𝅘𝅥𝅯𝅘𝅥𝅮

Posted on June 30, 2019 by djnpub

SF Shakes, 2019Tonight I saw this year’s play from the San Francisco Shakespeare Festival’s Free Shakespeare in the Park. It was a new production of As You Like It presented as a musical. I’ll have to say I was dubious when I thought about a musical version, but I was curious … and it turned out to be great!

It was a pleasant evening, not too cold. The staging was very simple: the court scenes had a plain red curtain supported by 4×4 poles; when they moved to the forest of Arden, they dropped the curtain and the poles became the forest. As is common, the actors played multiple roles in the court and in the forest. For the most part, the acting was very good, as was the singing. Best of all, the songs and music were very good too (which sometimes seems forced when they try to plug some old-style singing into a Shakespeare play). One of the best SF Shakespeare productions I’ve seen in a few years. All in all a very enjoyable evening.
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Civic Duty

Posted on June 11, 2019 by djnpub

I’m sure everybody has gotten a jury summons. I’ve received many. I used to think I got them annually like clockwork for a while. Every time before this, either there was not a need for a jury, so I was off the hook, or even the last few times when they needed juries and I had to travel to the courthouse, they satisfied the need before they got to me, so I got to go home. Not this time. I had already postponed once because when I got the summons last fall it was during a planned trip. This time the summons came and I had to go in, and when I did, I was picked to go up to the courtroom and got stuck in the jury box right off the bat … and I never got kicked out.

I ended up serving on a jury for a criminal trial. Luckily it was a very short trial. The jury selection was actually the longest part of the process lasting about 1 1/2 days. The trial was about a day, then we deliberated about a day. Actually we started deliberating on Friday afternoon for about an hour and a half before breaking for a three day weekend. When we came in Tuesday morning, we found one of the jurors had to be replaced by an alternate, so we had to start deliberating from scratch. Overall, it took four full days.

I found the whole process to be quite interesting. The jury selection was the most interesting to me hearing the judge both question the jurors at the same time asking questions that helped educate the jury pool as to what the role of the jury was. I was also surprised (but I guess I shouldn’t have been) at some of the politically-based views expressed by some of the potential jurors who were ultimately excused in one way or another. The trial was undramatic, but interestingly featured a lot of evidence from people’s home security video cameras. I guess I should do a little research into getting one of those. Although the jurors behaved quite respectively and civil and seemed to be trying to do their duty, I found the deliberations to be quite stressful in the end as we were deciding a serious matter. I was actually surprised that we reached a verdict and didn’t end up hung. I guess I’m glad I finally got to participate in this important civil process, but I also hope I don’t get picked to be on a jury again.

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A Cool PreSummer’s Night

Posted on May 30, 2019 by djnpub

2019 CalShakes A Midsummer Night's DreamI kicked off my theater season with CalShakes first play of the season, A Midsummer Night’s Dream. This was the first run of this year’s solo configuration for CSF for me. It was an enjoyable evening and nice to be getting back to the theater.

The production was very slapsticky. The reviewers and audience seemed to enjoy it more than I did. The staging was interesting as the main feature was a giant storage box which evolved as the play went on to have doors and have the front and sides morph to open things up. But it was fairly plain. The acting was solid. I felt the tone was very uneven. The choice to have the black guy periodically break character and do ’80s angry black man’ shtick seemed uninspired and tired. The mechanicals, which I always find a bit tedious, was even more so — although some of the reviewers loved this part. I enjoyed the evening, and it was a good way to start my season, but I wasn’t thrilled with this play.
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