I can’t believe how long it took me to finally get to the Utah Shakespearean Festival. I’ve wanted to go for years, but my natural tendency to procrastination combined with stories I’d heard (MANY years ago, before the Randall L. Jones Theater was bulit) about how hard it was to get tickets just somehow kept me from looking into it seriously. OK, it was pretty much all just procrastination. I admit it. It’s no longer difficult to get tickets, and probably hasn’t been that way for years, though of course you need to buy early if you want really good seats. Not that any of the seats in the theaters are “bad”, the theaters are small and well-designed, so even the “worst” seats are still good.

In the end, it took having some friends invite us to go with them for me to finally get there. They go every year, and took care of buying the tickets and arranging for the accommodations. They even drove - all I had to do was pack.

We had a wonderful time, and I’m sure we’ll be going back in future years. We didn’t want to spend all of our time at the festival, so we only got tickets for 3 plays, and allowed ourselves some time to also enjoy the splendors of Southern Utah. But more on that later.

As for the plays, we only saw one play by Shakespeare - “Twelfth Night”, which we saw in the Adams theater, the outdoor theater that’s a replica of Shakespeare’s famous Globe Theater. It had rained all afternoon, and we were afraid that the play would be moved inside, but about 2 hours before the play, the rain stopped and didn’t start up again until well after the play was over. The timing was perfect. I had read the play, but had never seen it performed, so it was a nice treat, and it was very well done.

We also saw “Candida” by George Bernard Shaw, which was well acted, but frankly we all found it a tad boring until the third act.

The real hit of the festival for us was the world premiere of “Lend me a Tenor: The Musical”. It was marvelous, and greatly deserved the rousing standing ovation it received. I’d highly recommend it if you ever have the chance to see it. I had never seen the original, non-musical play, so I can’t compare them, but this new musical version is certainly a smash.

And the title of my post? Many of the advertisers in the Playbill used Shakespearean quotes in their ads. I found it rather amusing that KSL TV had an advertisement which said “Wherefore art thou at 10 p.m.?” I wouldn’t expect most people to know that the word “wherefore” actually means “why” and not “where” - even many people who’ve read a lot of Shakespeare don’t know that. (Juliet isn’t asking where Romeo is, she’s asking why he has to be “Romeo”, who’s family name is an enemy to her own.) But it did strike me as funny that a “proud supporter of the Utah Shakespearean Festival” would make that error in a publication that would be read by Shakespeare fans. What can I say, it’s the little things that amuse me.

Oh, and of course, much knitting was done on the road trip. I’m almost done with Carla, but probably won’t have her finished until the weekend, since I won’t have any time to knit today.