An eye-sore to our solemn festival

Y'know, with Shakespeare, as with pretty much anything else, you get what you pay for. (Except sometimes, even when you pay a lot - like at the Old Globe in San Diego, CA, or the Utah Shakespearean Festival in Cedar City, UT - you don't always get as much as you should.) Well, every now and then you find a really charming production at a reasonable price.

Back in 1996, we went to an inexpensive production of Pericles at the Cassius Carter Center Stage (part of the Old Globe complex in San Diego) directed by Anne Justine D'Zmura and performed by MFA students from USD. As I mentioned previously, two of my favorite productions ever of Shakespeare plays were at BYU, but since those admittedly callow days of my theatre-going experience, I've become a bit more tentative about going to just any old student production, and with good reason. So I was a little nervous about what to expect, quality-wise, from this Pericles. Fortunately, it was a happy experience. Oh, there was some student level acting, not much better than what you'd expect at a high school show, but there was Andrea Cirie to make up for it. There was a lot of doubling and tripling of roles in this production; Cirie played Thaisa and a Myteline prostitute, but it was especially in the former role that she impressed me with her ability to make one of Shakespeare's characters seem real.

The scene (2.2) where Thaisa and her father watch the knights vying for her favor was sweet and delightful and funny. Her attraction to Pericles was obvious, and she gave him appeal that the actor portraying him was unhappily not able to give himself. I was especially moved by their reunion at the temple of Diana (5.3): after she woke from her faint, her joy and her tears were very affecting.

So in spite of the crazy costuming (Antiochus' court were clad in medieval-looking robes; Cleon and Dionyza had what appeared to be 18th century French clothing, complete with powdered wigs; the brothel denizens wore 1970s Goodwill castoffs; Pericles and his people dressed in a style reminiscent of late 19th century Russia) and the skimpy sets and props (or maybe because of the skimpy sets and props), it was an enjoyably adequate performance with a couple of bright spots to make it well worth my while.

It was that experience that reminded me to be a little less judgemental about amateur productions. But I have found since then that the USD Pericles was an exception.

We went to see The Tempest last night at the San Jacinto Shakespeare Festival in Hemet. Three things made me a little reluctant about going: 1) The Tempest isn't my favorite play, 2) the tickets cost only $10 (see "you get what you pay for" above), and 3) the San Jacinto what? But, remembering Pericles and Andrea Cirie, I was determined to keep an open mind.

The venue for the San Jacinto Shakespeare Festival is the Ramona Bowl in Hemet. The Ramona Bowl is also the home of the Ramona Pageant; performed annually (since 1923!), it tells, through the experiences of a half-Indian woman (named Ramona, in case you were wondering), the story of the mistreatment of the Indians when the Americans started coming to California en masse in the 1850s.


As we got our programs and went to sit down, it was getting quite dark, and there was a nearly-full moon shining brightly just above the point where the two hills came together. It was quite a lovely sight, and I remarked to Gary that I thought it seemed an ideal setting for the story of The Tempest, which (as you ought to know) takes place on an almost deserted island. I believe that was the last positive comment I made.

I don't want to be nitpicky and complain about every little thing that was wrong. It will give you an idea of how wrong things were, though, when I tell you that, just before the play began, some fellow came out and told the audience that there would be no doublets in the costuming this year, that it was a "concept" production. I never did figure out what the concept was. It looked kind of like a "there's no budget for costumes" concept, but I can't be sure, because Prospero, dressed in slacks and a blue buttoned shirt, sometimes sported a very dashing Dracula cloak. Anyway, this concept, combined with some very amateurish acting and garbled delivery of the language, made me happy that the play was only two hours long, including the intermission.

Not everything was horrible. The fellow who played Prospero did pretty well, except he kept saying "uh..." between lines or in the middle of his lines, like maybe he was trying to make it sound more like natural speech. There were some interesting things, too. The character of Trinculo was renamed Trincula and played by a young woman with a kind of Betty Boop voice. (Incidentally, the characters of King Alonso and Sebastian were also changed to Queen Alonsa and...Sebastian! "Not Sebastiana?" I asked myself. Sadly, I had no answer.) Anyway, Trincula was engaged in a lot of physical humor with Stephano and Caliban, which was funny at times (I laughed), but she kept shuffling around in quick mincing steps wherever she went, and that confused me.

Caliban looked like a giant human-headed iguana wearing a cutaway trenchcoat, and sounded like Peter Lorre. Stephano, dressed sort of like a disco dancer, rolled around in the dust a lot - he was drunk, you see, and apparently he took his characterization seriously because I heard him make some pretty egregious errors in his speeches. For instance, when he should have said "How now shall this be compass'd?", he said "HOW garble garble this be comPASSED?" And then, a moment later, he was supposed to say, "Trinculo and thyself shall be viceroys. Dost thou like the plot, Trinculo?" But instead he said, "Thee and Trincula shall be viceroys. How does thee like the plot, Trincula?" The director may have had a concept for the play, but Stephano had no concept of Shakespearean English.

During the intermission, I heard some people talking a couple of rows behind me. I didn't really pay any attention to their conversation, because they weren't talking about The Tempest, until one of them, a young man, said rather insistently and with obvious scorn for his companion, "...based on a play by Robert Greene called Rosalind! What are you talking about?!"

I wondered what he was talking about. If he meant Rosalynde - a source of Shakespeare's play, As You Like It - that was a novel, not a play, and it was by Thomas Lodge, not Robert Greene. Or perhaps that's what he was trying to tell his friend. Apparently errors abounded in the audience as well as among the cast. At any rate, I found their conversation much more intriguing than what was happening onstage at the Ramona Bowl.

When it was over, I reflected again on the need for more widespread Shakespearean theatrical training in this country. And on where I need to go and how much I have to pay to find decently performed Shakespeare. And on how seldom I see a seductive attitude on stage carried off convincingly. And on why ingenues always look and sound so vapid. And on what a real iguana would look like in a little coat.

P.S. After writing this, I googled the San Jacinto Shakespeare Festival and found their MySpace site. Someone there wrote that the concept of The Tempest was supposed to be that of a "1930s pulp story", like an Indiana Jones adventure. Well, they should have mentioned that in the program or something, because it explains Betty Boop (sort of), and Peter Lorre, and the Dracula cape, and the queen and her pals wearing khaki shorts. Oh, and Ferdinand's fedora. Ferdinand's fedora! I like that; d'you know, I do! It should be the name of something, somewhere.