Entertaiment

Utah Shakespearean Festival Opens 2004 Summer Season

Three Shakespearean plays, the musical My Fair Lady, and two other plays are being presented on outdoor and indoor stages during the Tony Award-winning festival’s 43rd season.

by Laurie Williams Sowby

CEDAR CITY, UTAH — The Utah Shakespearean Festival opened its 43rd season on June 24, and all six productions are now running in repertory through Sept. 4.

Summer offerings include Shakespeare’s “Henry IV, Part One,” directed by J.R. Sullivan; “The Taming of the Shrew,” directed by Henry Woronicz; and “The Winter’s Tale,” directed by Fontaine Syer,” all performed on the outdoors Adams stage.

On the indoors Randall Jones Theater stage are the popular musical “My Fair Lady,” directed and choreographed by Marc Robin; Paul Osborn’s revival comedy “Morning’s at Seven,” directed by Kathleen F. Conlin; and another musical favorite, “Forever Plaid,” directed by Russell Treyz.

To see complete schedule and to order tickets online, visit www.bard.org. The site also has info on the many places to stay in Cedar City — a three-hour drive south from Provo and one hour north of St. George. (Having thought of just about everything to make it a success, the festival even offers child care while parents attend a play.)

For more than four decades, the little college town of Cedar City has been making magic with Shakespeare under the stars. In 2000, the effort earned the Utah Shakespearean Festival a Tony Award for Outstanding Regional Theater — a well-deserved feather in the cap of an organization that has continued to expand its offerings along with its horizons.

The festival began in 1962 as the dream of Fred C. Adams, who’d just arrived at the College of Southern Utah (now Southern Utah University) as a theater instructor. He was sure the many tourists who came to the area to see Utah’s spectacular scenery would also love to see a Shakespeare play. With the backing of the college president and a lot of hard work from townspeople, the Utah Shakespearean Festival was launched with three plays each summer.

As it grew, the festival added lectures, play orientations, backstage tours, a costume exhibit, pre-show fun Elizabethan style in the Greenshow, and a “royal feaste” (which has been abandoned this year).

In the late 1980s, the Utah Shakespearean Festival added other playwrights to the repertoire, mounting additional productions in its new Randall L. Jones Theater. During summer, that stage rotates its three plays and/or musicals with the three Shakespearean shows in the outdoor Adams Memorial Theater, built to resemble Shakespeare’s Globe.

The fall season, inaugurated in 1999 to extend the festival’s active season, runs from Sept. 23 through Oct. 30. Up this fall: Shakespeare’s “Macbeth;” a musical, “The Spitfire Grill;” and Noel Coward’s “Blithe Spirit,” all on the indoor Jones Theater stage.

As part of the festival’s educational programs, playwrights present staged readings of new works each week, with the final product of the three works-in-progress to be presented in readings Sept. 1-3. In addition, thousands of high school theater students descend on Cedar City on the fall (Oct. 7-9 this year) to participate in the annual competition.

It’s possible to see all six productions in three days, but since that’s a bit too much sitting for me, I chose three, each running just short of three hours, including intermission. Here are my nutshell reviews of those three plays, as different from each other as they could be, yet all well done and enjoyable. Amazingly, USF’s versatile actors each appear in at least two productions, often in such a different role you’d hardly recognize them. But that’s part of the fun of the Utah Shakespearean Festival.

— “Henry IV, Part One,” is one of the Bard’s “lighter” historical plays, with ample comedy interjected into the political plot. The king (Peter Sham) seems to play an almost minor role here, as the bold Hotspur (Brian Vaughan) and Henry’s son (Jonathan Brathwaite) contend for the kingdom.

Kieran Connolly’s rotund and raucous Jack Falstaff is an ever-present source of comic relief, even in scenes of tragedy and , supported by his sidekick Bardolph (Charles Metten). It’s a fast-paced production of a play which contains a veritable lexicon of pithy insults.

— “Morning’s at Seven,” a revival of Paul Osborn’s less-performed 1938 play, is a charming production with an excellent ensemble cast. Set in the back yards of two adjoining houses, the play shows a day in the life of four aging sisters and their families who are anxious to see 40-year-old Homer (David Ivers) marry Myrtle, his 39-year-old fiancee of 12 years (played by Corliss Preston). Plenty of laughs cover the more serious undertones of the play as the family begins to unravel, then finds resolution in unexpected ways.

Solid performances are given by Joe Cronin and Jane Ridley as the Swansons, Anne Newhall as the spinster sister who has always lived with them, Leslie Brott and Richard Kinter as Homer’s parents, and Anne Cullimore Decker as the oldest sister, who must put up with her insufferably superior husband, played by A. Bryan Humphrey.

— “My Fair Lady” is the dazzling spectacle you expect in this venerable musical about the London flower whom Professor Henry Higgins bets he can turn into a refined woman. Melinda Pfundstein’s feisty Eliza Doolittle proves a challenge to Kurt Ziskie’s arrogant, unfeeling professor and a delight to the audience with her soprano voice.

Musical numbers soar, and director Marc Robin’s choreography in the production numbers lift them beyond the ordinary. The live orchestra, dazzling costumes (by Janet Swenson), and clever stage set which keep things moving quickly between scenes all help make it outstanding. Memorable songs, memorably sung, include Jason Heil’s “On the Street Where You Live” and Ziskie’s “I’ve Grown Accustomed to Her face.” All in all, USF’s “My Fair Lady” is absolutely “loverly.”

2004 Meridian Magazine.  All Rights Reserved.