Utah Shakespeare Festival 2024

Marilyn and I drove to Cedar City to attend the Utah Shakespeare Festival Friday morning.  This is one of our favorite traditions and we look forward to it all year (we are already planning for next year).  We were there for three days and two nights and were able to see four shows.

Our first show on Friday was The 39 Steps in the Randall Jones Theatre.  This is one of my favorites because it is a hilarious spoof of the 1935 spy thriller of the same name by Alfred Hitchcock.  There are only four actors performing all of the roles and the action is lightning fast with scene changes and costume changes happening on stage.  Tom Coiner plays Richard Hannay, a man at loose ends who becomes embroiled in a plot to stop a ring of spies from stealing military secrets after a mysterious woman named Annabella Schmidt is stabbed to death in his apartment.  Tracie Lane plays Annabella and several other women who become romantically involved with Hannay when he travels to Scotland to clear his name.  Michael Doherty and Bailey Savage play every other character, including actors, traveling salesman, policeman, innkeepers, farmers, spies, and more.  The staging is so clever and I especially loved the use of light and shadow in the chase sequences.  The set, which features a large corrugated metal backdrop with props scattered around the stage ready to be used, is also very clever.  I enjoyed the performances because the physical comedy is brilliant.  Doherty is one of my favorite actors at the festival because he has fantastic comedic timing and his physicality is so much fun to watch but there were several instances, especially at the political meeting and at the inn, where his shtick goes on a bit too long.  I really liked, but didn't quite love, this production.

On Friday night we saw A Winter's Tale outside in the Engelstad Theatre.  I saw this at the festival many years ago but I didn't really remember it so it was my most anticipated show this year.  I absolutely loved it!  King Leontes of Sicilia (Chauncey Thomas) becomes wrongly convinced that his wife Queen Hermione (Tracie Lane) is being unfaithful with his childhood friend King Poloxines of Bohemia (Geoffrey Kent) and that Poloxines is the father of her unborn child.  Leontes refuses to believe the oracle which exonerates Hermione and tragedy ensues until his rightful daughter Perdita (Alaysia Renay Duncan), who has been raised by an old shepherd (Chris Mixon), falls in love with Prince Florizel (Christopher Centinaro), the son of Poloxines, sixteen years later.  I loved everything about this production!  The set is beautiful (the set pieces and the sumptuous costumes place the events in the early 1900s) with an emphasis on false images, through the use of large picture frames around the action, and time healing wounds, with a large clock located above the action.  I also loved Hermione's jail cell and statue which rise dramatically from below the stage.  All of the performances are outstanding and I especially loved Thomas, because he convincingly portrays so many different emotions, the amusing interactions between Michael Doherty, as Antigonus, and Trenell Mooring, as his wife Paulina, and Kinsley Seegmiller as the young Prince Mamillius because he is adorable.  Marilyn loved this as much as I did!

Saturday afternoon we saw Much Ado About Nothing in the Randall Jones Theatre and this was my favorite of the festival.  Prince Don Pedro (Rodney Lizcano) returns home from war to stay with Leonato (Henry Woronicz), the governor of Messina, with his soldiers Benedict (Walter Kmiec) and Claudio (Jimmy Nguyen) and his bastard brother Don John (Marco Antonio Vega).  Claudio falls in love with Hero (Dariana Elise Perez), Leonato's daughter, and to pass the time before their wedding Hero's cousin Beatrice (Melinda Parrett) and Benedict are duped into believing the other is in love with them.  On the night before the wedding Claudio is deceived by a plot devised by the jealous Don John and denounces Hero as unchaste.  She is overcome and believed to be dead before she is eventually proved innocent by a chance discovery made by Dogberry (Blake Henri), the bumbling constable.  Benedict wins Beatrice's love by defending her cousin's honor and Claudio is eventually reunited with Hero after realizing his error.  Comedy is sometimes really tricky (more on this later) but this production gets the balance just right.  The physicality between Parrett (another one of my favorite actors at the festival) and Kmiec is absolutely hilarious, particularly their interactions after they learn the other loves them.  The scenes involving the constable and the watchmen, which can sometimes be overdone, are also incredibly funny.  The entire audience laughed out loud from beginning to end!  Every aspect of this production is extremely well done (I loved the set) and I would say this is the best version of this show that both Marilyn and I have seen.

Our last show on Saturday was The Taming of the Shrew in the Engelstad Theatre and I cannot even begin to express how much both of us hated this particular interpretation.  This is the first show I have ever walked out of in my life; Marilyn didn't even make it to intermission.  This production includes the rarely performed induction scene, which is a framing device wherein the drunken Christopher Sly (Topher Embrey) is shown a play by a traveling troupe to teach him a lesson about his bad behavior.  The acting troupe then completely transforms the stage with set pieces that belong in the world of Dr. Seuss while wearing outlandish costumes incorporating bold colors with black and white patterns.  They then perform the story of Katherina (Caitlin Wise) and Petruchio (John DiAntonio) in the style of commedia dell'arte which features exaggerated performances and stock characters.  Baptista (Chris Mixon), a wealthy lord of Padua, refuses to let the many suitors, including Lucentio (James Carlos Lacey), Hortensio (John Harrell), and Gremio (Rodney Lizcano), court his beautiful younger daughter Bianca (Valerie Martire) until his shrewish older daughter Katherina is married.  Lucentio convinces Petruchio, who is motivated by her large dowry, to marry the reluctant Katherina so he can marry Bianca but Katherina eventually proves the more obedient wife.  I really dislike slapstick because, in my opinion, it is the lowest form of comedy and assumes that the audience cannot appreciate the nuances in the story.  Not only does this feature slapstick but it is overdone (complete with circus music and obnoxious sound effects) to the point of tedium.  I initially enjoyed the interactions between Wise and DiAntonio because they are funny, especially when she hisses at him, but when slapstick is used in the scenes where Katherina is mistreated by Petruchio I couldn't take it any more and decided to leave (it was really empowering to leave something I wasn't enjoying).  This production is definitely the worst version of this play that I have ever seen and it is unfortunate that this was our final performance because both Marilyn and I enjoyed everything else.  We still had a great time at the festival and and it was really fun to experience all of our traditions (the many tarts we had were delicious).

Note:  There are many other opportunities at the festival such as backstage tours, costume and prop seminars, and discussions about the performances.  We have done many of these but this year Marilyn and I attended "Repertory Magic" and we got to see the changeover from the set for The 39 Steps to the set for Much Ado About Nothing at the Randall Jones Theatre.  It was absolutely fascinating!

Rear Window

I haven't been to many movies in the Fathom's Big Screen Classics series this year but I just couldn't resist Rear Window in honor of its 70th Anniversary.  Alfred Hitchcock is one of my favorite directors and this is widely considered to be one of his best movies so I was really excited to see it on the big screen for the first time.  I found it to be incredibly riveting.  L.B. "Jeff" Jeffries (James Stewart) is a photojournalist who has been incapacitated by a broken leg and is confined to a wheelchair.  Because he has nothing else to do he spends most of his time watching all of his neighbors across the courtyard from his window.  After he hears a scream in the middle of the night and sees a man named Lars Thorwald (Raymund Burr) leaving his apartment with a large suitcase multiple times, he becomes convinced that Lars murdered his invalid wife when he doesn't see her the next morning.  He enlists the help of Lisa Fremont (Grace Kelly), his socialite girlfriend, Stella (Thelma Ritter), the nurse hired to care for him, and Tom Doyle (Wendell Corey), a buddy from the war now working as a detective in the NYPD, to help him investigate.  However, the man he views through the telephoto lens of his camera eventually gets a little too close for comfort.  What makes this so compelling is that we in the audience are also voyeurs just like Jeff because we see everything from his POV (many of the shots are framed as if being viewed through his telephoto lens) so we are just as eager to solve the crime as he is.  It is an incredibly clever conceit.  The suspense is almost unbearable, particularly in a scene where Lisa is in danger of discovery from Thorwald because Jeff cannot do anything to save her.  I loved the dichotomy in the characters of Jeff and Lisa because he is a man of action but cannot take any action while she is viewed as frivolous but is more capable than she appears.  All of the technical aspects, especially the complicated set, the atmospheric lighting, and the diegetic sound design, are very well done and definitely enhance the mood.  I was surprised by how much more I enjoyed this movie seeing it on the big screen so I definitely recommend this series.  Go here for more information if you are interested.

Blink Twice

The second movie in my double feature at the Broadway last night was Blink Twice and I thoroughly enjoyed it because it is really wild but also very thought-provoking.  Cocktail waitress Frida (Naomi Ackie) and her best friend Jess (Alia Shawkat) bluff their way into an event where they meet Slater King (Channing Tatum), a notorious billionaire who has been forced to apologize publicly and to relinquish control of his tech company because of his inappropriate behavior.  He invites them to his private island along with his hangers-on Vic (Christian Slater), Cody (Simon Rex), Tom (Haley Joel Osment), and Lucas (Levon Hawke), their guests Sarah (Adria Arjona), Camille (Liz Caribel), and Heather (Trew Mullen), his personal assistant Stacy (Geena Davis), and his therapist Rich (Kyle McLachlan).  Once they arrive on the island their phones are confiscated but they stay in lavish accommodations, receive expensive gifts, and are treated to gourmet meals, champagne, and a never ending supply of drugs.  They spend their days, which all start to run together, in a haze of drunken debauchery until Jess starts to feel like something is very wrong.  Frida dismisses her concerns because she enjoys living like the 1% do but, when Jess disappears and the other guests do not remember her ever being there, she realizes that something sinister is going on.  This is a stylish and atmospheric thriller with a menacing performance from Tatum and a brutal, but strangely satisfying, third act.  However, what I enjoyed most was the social commentary about the imbalance of power between classes and genders, especially when it is leveraged to avoid taking responsibility for bad behavior.  There are also some intriguing discussions about repressing trauma, pitting women against each other instead of the patriarchy, and staying silent after witnessing wrongdoing.  This is entertaining (I laughed out loud during a twist at the end) and also a bit unsettling so I definitely look forward to future projects by Zoe Kravitz.

Note:  This could be very triggering for victims of sexual abuse.

Good One

Last night I decided on another double feature at the Broadway and I started with Good One because I missed it at Sundance this year.  I absolutely loved this character-driven coming of age story.  Seventeen-year-old Sam (Lily Collias) has weekend plans to backpack through the Catskills with her father Chris (James Le Gros), who is divorced from her mother and has a younger wife and new baby at home, his best friend Matt (Danny McCarthy), who is currently going through a messy divorce, and Matt's teenage son Dylan.  When Dylan backs out of the trip at the last minute because he is angry about the divorce, Sam is left on her own with two men who are extremely dissatisfied with their lives.  At first they are benignly dismissive of her (I was particularly struck by how annoyed they are whenever they have to wait for her to take a bathroom break to change a tampon) and assume that she will complete all of the menial tasks around the campsite while they get drunk and swap stories to one up each other.  Then, in one moment fraught with tension, everything changes and Sam realizes that she is not safe with them.  Almost all of the action takes place in the wide expanse of the great outdoors but it still feels incredibly claustrophobic because of how the three characters interact with each other and how the shots of these interactions are framed.  Collias gives a highly nuanced performance because so much of what is happening is left unsaid but you can intuit exactly what Sam is thinking by the subtle change in her body language and expression as she becomes aware of her father's flaws, especially in a scene where she rests on a boulder by herself because you can see her steeling herself for what is to come.  This is definitely a slow burn but I found it to be extremely compelling and powerful.

Harry Potter Marathon

I am a huge fan of the Harry Potter franchise so I was really excited to see a marathon of all eight movies with my sister Kristine over the weekend.  I had never done a marathon like this before and, even though I was really tired at the end (it was 22 hours including short breaks), I had so much fun!  Most people were in costume (I represented House Ravenclaw) and there were some really fun backdrops for photos.  The ticket included a free large popcorn and soda with unlimited refills and you could purchase a meal package with breakfast, lunch, and dinner catered by local restaurants but we opted not to get it because we thought it was expensive for what it was (the Megaplex at Jordan Commons has lots of food options and the service was great despite the big crowds during the meal breaks).  As I watched each of the movies I was especially struck by the enchanting world-building in Sorcerer's Stone, the theme of fearing those who are different in Chamber of Secrets, the developing relationship between Harry and Sirius Black in Prisoner of Azkaban, the changing dynamic between Harry, Ron, and Hermione and their friends as they enter adolescence in Goblet of Fire, the darker tone as Harry's mind is invaded by Voldemort (it is interesting to see Harry mimic Voldemort's mannerisms) in Order of the Phoenix, the higher stakes for every character in Half-Blood Prince, the importance of friendship and teamwork in Deathly Hallows Part One, and the weight of responsibility that Harry feels as he faces Voldemort (I always get a tears in my eyes when Harry asks his parents, Remus, and Sirius to be with him) in Deathly Hallows Part Two.  I also enjoyed seeing the changes in Daniel Radcliffe, Rupert Grint, and Emma Watson as they grow up on screen (it is much more evident watching the movies one after the other).  I love every movie in the series but if I had to pick a favorite it would be Goblet of Fire (which is really ironic because I dozed off for a few minutes and missed the sequence in the maze).  The audience wasn't as boisterous as I was expecting but there were definitely cheers and applause at the end of the final movie (maybe it was just relief that we had all survived).  I had a great time and I would definitely do a movie marathon again!

Note:  I'm happy that I got to experience this with Kristine because she is the one who introduced the books to me.