Dachs Thoughts

Tonight I got to see the latest CalShakes production, Romeo and Juliet. It is always one of my favorites, and this was a very good rendition. The staging was very spare, consisting of just a couple of crossing platforms on the stage. Throughout the show, a stair-ladder was brought in for the balcony scene, and a bed was brought in for some of the scenes, but that was about it. The cast was similarly sparse, all of the characters being played by 7 actors. But it really worked. In addition to the minimalist cast, what was unique was that Romeo and Juliet were really portrayed as young teenagers, so some of their over the top emotion is more believable. Particularly the actress who played Juliet really conveyed the youth of her role.

Bill and Andy managed to make it to this one. It was a bit of a cool night, with the fog coming in early, but a great evening of live theater.

Tonight I saw the last CalShakes play of the season, Hamlet. It was a very interesting production. The set was basically a rundown abandoned swimming pool, that I subsequently learned probably symbolized the decrepit state of a formerly glorious kingdom. It took a while for the pacing to get going, but it turned out to be pretty powerful. It was a very modernized version, starting for example with the final summary speech, perhaps meaning to make the entire storyline of the play be a memory. Hamlet is of course a classic tragedy where it ends with basically everybody dead, but they conveyed the ghostly nature of that, and emphasized the tragedy of it by having the dead characters return as ghosts. At the end, you actually see everybody who has died, not just those of the final scene, and it’s quite moving.

The acting was excellent, and the lead who played Hamlet particularly conveyed the emotional anguish he was going through. There was a sometimes odd use of modern pop music at various places, but overall it worked. There was lots of actor movement in the aisles, the first of which startled me when a guy came with a big gun right in front of us. Overall a fun evening and good end to the 2012 season.

This capped off a busy day, since we had our graduation ceremony from the UC Berkely leadership institute at 4:00 at an event center in one of the wineries. So I had to zoom up there right after. It looks like the group may be disintegrating. Bill and Andy had to switch nights due to scheduling conflicts, and Rita never showed, so I was there on my own. I may have to revisit continuing to hold down the six seat row next year.