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This is a posting about a weekend in Cedar City, Utah attending the Utah Shakespearean Festival at Southern Utah University. I highly recommend you take some time there during remainder of the summer and into the fall. I also recommend a stay at the Iron Gate Inn which you can read about in an earlier post.
CEDAR CITY, UTAH (July 27, 2008) – This is one of Las Vegans favorite escapes. We drive north on I-15 where it’s a little cooler, the mountains are shaded salmon, and we think we’ve landed in Mayberry western style.
But instead of Andy and Opie, we have The Bard. The center of Cedar City is Southern Utah University, a lovely little campus. But the center of SUU is the Utah Shakespearean Festival, founded by Fred Adams, who, in 1961 as the school’s theater professor, saw the flood of summer tourists with little or nothing to do.
Today his vision has been immortalized with a bronze statue on campus. Knowing Fred since 1990, I knew what a hallowed event monument this would be for him. “My ass is not that big,” he shouted to me in a recent interview. I didn’t check.
But Fred’s image, his vision, his passion, and, needless to say, his sense of humor are all much bigger, at least figuratively, than his bronzed backside.
Yes, the Utah Shakespearean Festival has been around now for more than 40 years. Sure, they won a regional Tony Award in 2000. But what amazes me is this. Las Vegas, the cauldron of gaudiness, lacking any intellectual threads, is a major source of support for the festival. I’m amazed at each visit the amount of people I meet from Las Vegas. And we’re not talking the upper income earners; no it’s usually working class folks with their kids.
That’s because Fred and the festival staff have made Shakespeare fun and relevant. In September and October, the festival will perform Julius Caesar in a 2008 setting. It’s no coincidence, Fred tells me, that Caesar will run only months and weeks before the election.
Fred’s pre-performance talks are a delight. If you’re new to Shakespeare take in Fred’s words and then you can relax and enjoy the performance.
Another change to the festival over the past ten years was offering non-Shakespeare plays; for instance, this year audiences saw the musical Fiddler on the Roof, the Nineteenth Century classic Cyrano de Bergerac, and Moliere’s The School for Wives.
This is my first trip here in a number of years. While I was a news anchor in Las Vegas from 1990 to 1996, I not only attended the festival and saw every play, but I also brought up a camera crew and produced a 30-minute show. The bulk of those shows were lively and fascinating interviews with Fred – though kept for posterity in my mind, not necessarily for his previously mentioned posterior.
Frankly, I’m kicking myself from being away so long. National TV shows and other ventures were the causes of my absence for those years — but no more.
Our good friends/clients Frank Gerri Tussing joined us for three days, two nights, and four shows.
The four shows we saw were: Two Gentleman from Verona; Othello; Cyrano de Bergerac; and Fiddler on the Roof. The four of us recommend them all.
My favorite, to my surprise, was Fiddler. Usually, I gravitate – or fixate – on the tragedies. (English major!) But this musical performance was near flawless. Every actor held their role, as I put it, to completion. I didn’t have to suspend belief and I was moved. That says a lot when you consider they break out in song and dance. Sure, the live orchestra helped too.
That’s not to say the other shows – Othello, Cyrano, and Two Gentleman – lacked good performances; to the contrary.
Brian Vaughn was brilliant as Cyrano and as Lance, the servant in Two Gentleman. He was witty and poignant, stealing roles whether as a principle or ancillary. Over the years, I rate Brian as one of my top five favorite performers here.
Jonathan Earl Peck, who played Othello, was spell-binding. He captured the subtle metamorphosis of content husband to deranged and influenced jealous lover. My first live performance of Othello was with James Earl Jones more than 25 years ago. Peck’s performance rates with it. Like any great performance of Othello, Macbeth, or Hamlet, the audience needs to loath yet suffer with these main characters. Peck’s performance made you want to go up on stage and say, “Dude, what are you thinking?”
His counterpart, James Newcomb, who played the evil Iago was equally captivating, so much so you wanted to strangle him yourself.
These three, along with many others, are experienced actors from stage and screen. Along with the Directors, they give the Utah Shakespearean Festival, to quote Cyrano, all the panache of Broadway.
There are also some young well-trained performers who are just cutting their teeth. These young thespians know their lines, but, at times, lack the experience and miss moments that fulfill the true essence of a character or, at times, their youth fails to interpret gestures or actions that will give the audience new meaning. Doing this is not easy. Their inexperience, however, takes nothing away from their performances. In fact, for the seasoned theater-goer, watching these up-and-comers search and struggle for their acting identities is an added intrigue to the experience.
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September 27th, 2008 at 2:44 pm
[…] acting, as always, is superb. Although you may find some college thespians cutting their teeth in a summer production here, this […]
August 21st, 2009 at 5:27 am
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