Dachs Thoughts

Tonight I saw the last play in this year’s Colorado Shakespeare Festival visit. It was a good way to end the run. It was an original practices production of Edward III, a play which is not in the Shakespeare Canon, but is attributed to William Shakespeare and Thomas Kyd. It is a history play that basically predates the stories contained in the Richard II — Richard III series of plays. It’s also rarely produced. It is always exciting to see the OP productions, and the cast did an amazing job, considering they only had 20 hours of rehearsal, seeing the scripts for the first time on the Tuesday before the Sunday performance.

While the audience is explicitly encouraged to engage and react, as always it seems like there are some jerks who use that as an excuse to talk or perhaps try to draw attention to themselves. There were a couple of buddies behind me who seemed to feel the need to continuously comment to each other in not so quiet voices. Nonetheless, it was a very enjoyable production to see. It was a nice warm evening, and I even ended up sitting next to a couple who had lived in Concord for 8 years, so we got a chance to chat about CSF and Livermore wine country. It was a great way to end my week of Colorado Shakespeare.

After three days in the high country I drove back down to Boulder, while not exactly low, it was 4000′ lower in altitude, and I seem to have more energy. I chose to stay at an interesting Airbnb, which seems a bit like a hippy ashram, right next to South Boulder Creek. My room reminds me of my first Berkeley apartment and is very spartan, but the place is quite beautiful, and the host is an artist who has created in interesting visual ambiance on the grounds and in the river.

I saw my first play of the Colorado Shakespeare Festival, Richard III, in the University Theater. It was a great production to start my visit. It was really well done, as I’ve come to expect with CoSF company. The lead was played by a familiar face, Rodney Lizcano, who I’ve seen in past seasons, and he did an amazing job with an enormous amount of dialog during the nearly 3 hour play. It was framed as a production of Richard III being put on by a 19th century acting company, and the staging was very basic but effective. I thoroughly enjoyed it.
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Tonight I saw the second and final play in the Livermore Shakespeare Festival’s season, The Winter’s Tale. It was a very good production, particularly considering the minimalist staging available in the Wente setting. The acting was solid, and the play was very moving. Considering I saw this twice two summers ago I thought I might not be all that up for it, but it was great.

It was a very pleasant night, and I again joined Bob, Blanca and Jim. I guess this is the fifth year I’ve been coming to these with Bob, and it’s turning out to be a very solid company.
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For the second night in a row, I went out to see a play. This time it was my first Shakespeare play of the summer, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, which was this year’s San Francisco Shakespeare Festival Free Shakespeare in the Park.

This was a decent production, but I guess I was generally un-thrilled. This was from a combination of factors, the play itself in which the actors were good enough, but it appeared to be a somewhat short version (although it still seemed to go slow), and the audience and environment was generally annoying me. People came in late then just plopped in ahead of people and blocked entrances, got up in the middle of things and walked in and out, people answering phone calls, and there were loud kids playing a few hundred feet from the stage throughout the entire play. They also provided a “green show” ahead of time with kid actors to summarize the play for newcomers, which was totally useless and not entertaining. Maybe I’m just grumpy.

Despite that it was a pleasantly warm night for Shakespeare in the park, and even though it wasn’t the greatest it was still good to see some Shakespeare again.
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