Shakespeare, Baby!

For those that don't hail from our part of the country, you might be interested to know that there is am annual Shakespearean Festival hosted in Cedar City, Utah (that's about 4 hours from anywhere and 2 hours from nowhere). Natalie and I headed down there this weekend to make sure that she got her yearly dose of thespian theatrics. The kids got to play with their grandparents (three sets of them) while we saw the plays.

First up was the classic ladies' favorite, Pride and Prejudice. Yeah, I know, not Shakespeare, but I'm not in charge of the festival. The performance was pretty good, only slightly ruined by the fourteen-year -olds sitting near us making gooey wimpy noises whenever Darcy and Lizzy held hands. I'd probably also change the casting of Lizzy, cause when Darcy talked about her not being handsome enough to tempt him, I was thinking "Yeah, I understand."

That evening we caught Macbeth. Nat was really excited because she's been teaching it for years and never had a chance to see it. The costumes were great, the swordfighting was exciting, and the guy playing Macbeth did a straight-up-awesome job of looking crazy. It was pretty much awesome all around.

Did I mention the tarts? The tarts are probably just about as good a reason to attend the festival as the plays. They had a killer mixture of blueberry and blackberry in one of them that they called Summerberry. I need to learn how to make those. The cream cheese ones were also stellar. The raspberry, lemon, and apple were tasty but didn't quite keep up with the other flavors. Following Natalie's tradition, we got a tart at the intermission of each play, plus a couple extra at the start of the festival or when we had some free time and apetite between plays.

The second day, we watch Much Ado About Nothing in the afternoon. I liked the live version better than the movie, there were some funny kids in that cast. Natalie still thinks Hero should have ditched Claudio, but I figure the poor kid meant well. Anyway, off to grab some barbecue (wouldn't recommend doing that again where we went) and back to see The Merchant of Venice. Shylock was great, and the crazy Macbeth guy was back again as Bassanio. I liked Portia, as she seemed to be the only character in the play who wasn't a complete jerk.

Anyway, if you haven't ever been (like I hadn't) and you happen to reside in the great state of Utah, I'd recommend taking a day or two and heading down to catch some shows.