Dachs Thoughts

Tonight I saw the next play in CalShakes season, Life is a Dream, a play from the Spanish Golden Age, by a near contemporary of Shakespeare, Pedro Calderón del la Barca. I enjoyed it. The stage stage was spare, but beautifully designed with a curved arching wall/path and circular motifs within the stage. The actors were all strong. It was great to see Julian López-Morillas back at CalShakes again, as he has always been one of my favorites going back to the Berkeley Shakespeare Festival days. The play deals with the themes of self-determination versus destiny, morality, and reality versus imagination.

We had a mixed group this time: Jennifer joined us for the first time in many years, and as Andy was away, and Bill brought along Doug for the first time. I was a nice evening to get away from the press of work and enjoy a great play among the hills.

Tonight, before the 4th of July weekend kicks-in, I saw San Francisco Shakespeare Festival’s production of Romeo and Juliet, i.e., this season’s Free Shakespeare in the Park. The stage seemed pretty similar in structure to last years except for the paint covering it. Romeo and Juliet is one of my favorites. Maybe I’m getting too picky, but the production seemed just ok to me (although two newspaper reviews I read after the fact loved it). The interesting thing is that the words and the drama are so strong in this play that my perceived production failings didn’t seem to lessen the impact of the play.

The actors delivered the lines very accurately and clearly, and there was a particular focus on emphasizing the rhyming of the lines. This made the rhythm of the lines seem a little strange to me. They also made the opening prologue into a group chant, which I didn’t really like. The other thing that bugged me was the casting of Tybalt and Benvolio with women. This seems to be a trend lately, and while they were adequate actors, it didn’t help the story for me. But despite these personal irritations, the dramatic climax still was very moving — a testimony to the power of the play. 119

I started the day with a nice breakfast and walk along the Pearl Street Mall, then tonight I saw the second play of this season’s Colorado Shakespeare Festival, and the first Shakespeare play, Much Ado About Nothing. It was a wonderful production, focusing on the comedic aspects of the play. This one was in the outdoor Mary Rippon Theater, and the weather nicely cooperated for a very nice evening.

The acting was sharp and the play was well staged. The set was beautiful, blending in nicely to the stonework of the surrounding buildings. And much to my pleasure, the constable/Dogberry scenes were humorous, but not too long.

I took along two friends who were new to this kind of Shakespeare, and they enjoyed it very much. One stated it was the best play she’d ever seen. Thus ends this round of plays in Colorado, but my plans indicate more to come. 118

I made my way back to Colorado to see some plays, some mountains, and some friends. After a morning flight, a brief nap, and a dinner at The Sink, I went to my first Colorado Shakespeare Festival play of the season, Wittenberg. It was a terrific play, and a great start to this vacation.

The play deals with the contrast of religious thinking and rational philosophy, with some tweaks at the academic world. The premise has Hamlet a student at Wittenberg University, and two professors, Martin Luther and Dr. Faustus. It was very humorous, but also treated the religious arguments as respectfully as the rationalist arguments. There were only 4 performers, but it was extremely engaging and entertaining. Hamlet was played by the same actor who had major roles in last years’ plays, and Luther was played by Howard Swain, who I’ve seen previously at CalShakes. It was nice to get back to Boulder, and to see a new and very interesting play.

Tonight I attended the first CalShakes play of the season, which was Twelfth Night. We had a full house as Nathan B, and Kyoko and Ben, joined Bill, Andy and me. We lucked out as the night was very pleasant considering how cold it had been at home the previous night.

Overall, I enjoyed the play. The set was very basic with a background wall, and a coffin in the middle of the stage that evolved from coffin at the beginning as the reason for Olivia’s grieving, to bench, to prison cell. There were a couple of aspects that didn’t really enhance the play for me, although in the end they weren’t annoying enough to impact my enjoyment. The first was that it was a very small cast with a couple of actors playing multiple parts. As the play revolves around mistaken identity, this additional source of confusion didn’t add to the production. The second was that most of the primary may roles were played by women. In fact there was only one male cast member, and he played a bunch of secondary roles. He was ok, and he sang quite pleasantly in a number of songs that were in the production. The women playing men weren’t terrible, it just wasn’t great, or necessary, and came off a bit gimmicky to me. As the play already revolves around a woman disguising herself as a man, this additional gender-bending wasn’t necessary.

Overall glad to be restarting the Shakespeare engine again for this year; it’s been too long. 117