Two Senior Staff Members Leaving the Festival Stage

Jyl Shuler

Zachary Murray

CEDAR CITY — Two senior staff members will be taking their bows and exiting the Utah Shakespeare Festival stage this fall. Jyl Shuler, long-time development director, has announced her retirement effective October 31; and Zachary Murray, general manager and recently interim executive director, is taking a new job in the Southern Utah University Budget Office beginning October 1.

“These two individuals have been key players at the Festival,” said Executive Producer Frank Mack. “I will personally miss their professionalism, and the Festival as a whole will need to work hard to fill their shoes.”

Shuler started at the Festival twenty-eight years ago and has led the development efforts through periods of enormous growth and financial challenge, including the raising of millions of dollars for building the Beverley Center for the Performing Arts which opened in 2016. She will be retiring from her work at the Festival, but will continue her volunteer work in her adopted home of Cedar City.

 “I have had amazing opportunities to get to know and work alongside some of the most dedicated and enthusiastic people on the planet. The Festival staff, board, and volunteers are hard-working, creative, and talented individuals,” Shuler said. “With all the great people I have met, my time at the Festival wasn’t really work; it was ‘getting to know you’ every day. What could be better than that?”

“As development director, Jyl filled the vital role of raising contributed income over her long tenure,” said Mack. “While she will be missed, it is wonderful to see her enter this next phase of her life, and I wish her much happiness.”

Murray started as general manager at the Festival in 2014, and for much of 2017 also filled the role of interim executive director when R. Scott Phillips retired in March. It was only recently that he was able to transition back into the sole job of general manger when Frank Mack was hired to lead the Tony Award-winning organization.

“This is a bittersweet transition for me. I am excited for this opportunity to work in higher education again, but will miss working at the Festival with so many talented and dedicated individuals,” said Murray. “The theatre is important to our community and allows people to connect to art and storytelling in a unique way; and, when it comes to storytelling, the Utah Shakespeare Festival is second to none.”

Mack also complimented Murray on his tenure at the Festival, noting his acumen in behind-the-scenes accounting, budgeting, and financial management. “This is exactly the kind of critical work few people know about but makes a huge, difference in the success of the organization,” he said. “His extraordinary skills will be missed at the Festival, but will continue to serve Southern Utah University in his new role.”

The search to fill both positions are now underway at the Festival, with the hope to find the right people and fill the roles as soon as possible.

Tickets are now on sale for the Festival’s 56th season, which will run from June 29 to October 21.

The Festival’s 2017 season continues through October 21 with performances of How to Fight Loneliness, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, The Tavern, and William Shakespeare’s Long Lost First Play (abridged). For more information and tickets visit www.bard.org or call 1-800-PLAYTIX.

The Utah Shakespeare Festival is part of the Beverley Taylor Sorenson Center for the Arts at Southern Utah University, which also includes the Southern Utah Museum of Art (SUMA)

Don't Ya Dare Miss It!

By Kelli Allred, Ph.D.

A scene from The Tavern.

I first attended the Utah Shakespeare Festival in 1973, as an undergraduate in theatre education. Since then I have enjoyed every trip to Southern Utah and found every season of Shakespeare in Cedar City to be full of wonderful productions. The first decades of the Festival—the ’60s through the ’80s—were filled with thrilling productions of Shakespeare’s plays. By the ’90s when the Festival leaders decided to produce plays by other masterful playwrights, the Festival welcomed a new kind of audience that would know no borders or age limits. This summer my grandchildren will attend the plays with me for the first time. I can hardly wait! The Tavern will delight families, so I’m bringing the kids along for this one. Although it was not written with children in mind, it is family-friendly and promises to entertain audiences of all ages, from all places.

Nearly one hundred years ago, The Tavern opened in Atlantic City, with George M. Cohan playing the main character, which he would continue to play for the next twenty years. George M. Cohan was an American icon who may be best remembered for his patriotic compositions “Over There,” “You’re a Grand Old Flag,” and “Yankee Doodle Dandy” for which he was presented a Congressional Gold Medal in 1936. But Cohan wrote more than fifty plays, including The Tavern—an adaptation of Cora Dick Gantt’s first play The Choice of a Super-Man.

The Tavern was Cohan’s favorite play, and he revived it many times, often portraying the Vagabond himself.  “I can write better plays than any living dancer and dance better than any living playwright,” said Cohan. He was adept at taking old-fashioned melodramas, burlesquing them, and transforming them into hilarious comedies, as he did with The Tavern. In 1940 he wrote a sequel, The Return of the Vagabond, extending the theatrical popularity of the Vagabond character and Cohan himself.

The play is set in a tavern, which is merely a farmhouse with rudimentary quarters for paying guests and a barn that shelters livestock and indigents. On a stormy night, a mysterious wanderer insinuates himself into a small group of tavern guests. Over the course of the evening, violence ensues and each of the characters takes a turn at being suspected by the others. The play takes place at night, when The Tavern is dimly lit and the main character, known only as the Vagabond, casts ominous shadows with the help of a lone fireplace, a single lantern, and a persistent lightning storm. The absence of light in the opening scene may represent the ignorance and uncertainty of the townspeople.

The cast of characters includes four roles for women (which allowed Cohan to cast his wife, his sister, and eventually his daughter and take them on the road for extended runs of the play!) and a dozen men.

Other important “characters” are represented by The Elements: thunder, lightning, wind, and rain. Their ubiquitous disturbances (a.k.a. “the storm”) serve to editorialize and underscore the dialogue, not unlike a Greek chorus. The Elements also serve to remind viewers that life in the untamed West was perilous and no respecter of persons.

Adaptor and director Joseph Hanreddy’s stage directions push the story forward, demanding that the behind-the-scenes stage crew be on point every second: “A sudden sharp lightning flash and split of thunder, followed by a rumble that reverberates for a while. The Elements rage a bit. . . . The Cat heard from earlier is blown into the window. It SCREECHES and CLAWS at the window before being blown off into oblivion…The Women scream, and the Vagabond enters onto the upper landing. . . . The intensity of the fire is reflected off Violet, making her gestures look like shadow puppets.”

While this play might be a hybrid of television’s Bonanza and The Wild, Wild West, the Vagabond himself is a mixture of the charmingly handsome “Little Joe” Cartwright and the suave, debonair James West. The Vagabond brings adventure, romance, and artistic perspective to act 1. The innkeeper calls him “a man ’a mystery” and a “smooth talkin’ brandy-beggar.” Others refer to him as “a cheat, a con artist, a fake.” He is certainly a practiced flatterer and a hopeless romantic who loves to sing. The Vagabond breaks the fourth wall to confide in the audience that he has always wanted to be the hero in a play. He begins that quest by schmoozing Sally, the hired help. “You’re a good judge of character, Sally. Beneath this shabby exterior can you see a trace of something unmistakably refined and genteel?” to which the unrefined Sally replies, “I don’t give a skunk’s fart how genteel ya are!”

In act 2, the mysterious Vagabond becomes a sort of surrogate director/playwright/theatre critic. “I occupy a most unique position—that of not having been cast for a part in the great world drama of life.” He also refers to himself as “a lonely, solitary spectator, sitting back, looking on and laughing.” The Vagabond is a character who brings to the play a delightful and subtle burlesque romanticism. As act 2 draws to its close, the play reaches its climax. Poor Wile Ed Coats implores the others to stop screaming, stop shooting, and stop making so much noise. “Please God, make it quiet ag’in.” Some sound-sensitive audience members may be praying silently for the same! But the audience’s laughter will fill the few, albeit intentional, silences during the production.

Joseph Hanreddy adapted this production of The Tavern from the highly successful play by George M. Cohan (1920). Hanreddy is known for his adaptations of time-tested plays, including Pride and Prejudice. He served as artistic director of the Milwaukee Repertory Theater (1993–2010), spearheading over fifty new American plays, translations, and adaptations. He has worked closely with the major Shakespeare festivals in Oregon, Idaho, Great Lakes, and Utah. There will be no shortage of highs and lows, stops and starts, or surprises from this production —Hanreddy has made sure of that! His adaptation includes setting the story in southern Utah, referencing Fort Harmony and Panguitch on the geographic trail to Salt Lake City.

“I first adapted and directed The Tavern, at the Milwaukee Rep, and the production was as much pure fun as I’ve had in the theatre,” said Hanreddy. “We [originally] set the adaptation of George M. Cohan’s melodrama/farce in rural Wisconsin and Cohan’s characters and dialogue were adjusted to fit the sound . . . that our audience embraced and identified with. I’ve set the new script in the early days of the Utah Territory and found some new inspirations” for the Festival 2017 production: an Old West pulp fiction novel; the physical antics of a Buster Keaton or Keystone Cops film; and a hefty peppering of Shakespeare’s language, spoken by the main character.  Hanreddy’s chief goal in adapting The Tavern was “to create a joyous comic romp that audiences will find inventive, visually exciting, and uproariously funny!”

So, purchase tickets early and bring the entire family to see this classic of Americana that is guaranteed to please audiences!

The Tavern and Territorial Utah

By Allison Borzoni

Melissa Graves (left) as Mrs. Shotwell, Michael A. Harding as Selwyn Shotwell, Eric Schabla as Tom Allen, and Cassandra Bissell as Rosalind

In the late 1800s, the Civil War is still a distinct memory for many, cowboys were driving cattle across great tracts of land in the West, and California gold was still attracting prospectors and dreamers. In Utah, railroad tracks from east and west were joined in Promontory for the completion of the first transcontinental railroad in 1869, the first telephone service in the state was established in Ogden in 1879, and the Utah Territory was being administered by a series of territorial governors appointed by the president of the United States.

Such is the background for The Tavern, which opens this week at the Utah Shakespeare Festival, which is set in the late 1800s in southern Utah. The western United States was still young and mainly unsettled, and Cedar City was a fairly new community.

The Tavern takes place on a dark and stormy night; and a wild wind (familiar enough to Cedar City residents) blows all sorts of oddball characters into a remote Utah tavern. One of the characters who takes shelter in the tavern over the course of the play is Governor Shotwell. He doesn’t have a real-life counterpart in history, but if he did, then he would have served between the years of 1851 and 1896. Governor Shotwell also would have been appointed to the position by the United States president. Because the people did not choose their own governor, relationships could be complicated. Brigham Young was appointed as the first territorial governor of Utah under Presidents Fillmore and Pierce, but he was replaced by Governor Alfred Cumming, who came to Utah with military forces to back him up, causing a tense standoff and a few skirmishes with territorial residents. Governor Cumming only served for three years, followed by a series of other appointed officials.

However, not all of the governors were good choices for the territory. For example, Governor John W. Dawson’s term only lasted three weeks. This was probably because he openly opposed the mostly-Mormon population and even made a lewd proposal to a widow. The widow beat him with a shovel for the offense, and a group of men later attacked Dawson as he tried to flee the territory.

Although the golden age of the mountain man was fading away in the late 1800s, theatre was beginning to build a solid reputation. Theatre was becoming popular in the United States, and the character of The Vagabond in The Tavern illustrates that popularity and acting style of the time. The theatres themselves were switching from candlelight to gaslight and limelight to improve and diversify lighting, which shifted theatre’s crowds from rowdy and unruly lower classes to quieter middle- and upper-class audiences.

Theatre in the early 1800s consisted of long affairs with several acts besides the main event, like musical entertainment, dancing, and farces (which The Vagabond has a particular taste for). Post 1850s, the number of these extra acts began to shrink until there was only one main event. Acting styles also drifted from the grandiose and exaggerated to a more naturalistic style throughout the nineteenth century. However, comedic and burlesque actors were still a popular feature in theatre. Actors themselves were gaining a more proper reputation as well. Instead of being ostracized, well-known actors and actresses were invited into social circles and some became popular celebrities. Since most of these actors were originally from England, it’s safe to say that Americans have been big fans of British actors for a long time.

Altogether, the 1800s was a time of change as well as strange occurrences—like widows beating governors. The Tavern certainly delivers those bizarre happenings by bringing together an eclectic group of people caught up in the wild wind (which reminds us of our own Cedar City weather). Don’t miss the world premiere of The Tavern at the Festival this fall–you’ll find yourself caught up in the storm, as well as the farce, while watching this melodramatic show.

Patrick Page to Perform One Day Only at the Festival

Patrick Page

Patrick Page on Broadway: as The Grinch in Dr. Seuss’ How the Grinch Stole Christmas (left) and as Scar in The Lion King.

Patrick Page at the Festival: in the title role in Macbeth (left) and as Ben Jonson in Nothing Like the Sun.

After twenty-eight years away, Patrick Page is returning to the Utah Shakespeare Festival to perform his one-man show All the Devils Are Here, an exploration of the evil depicted in Shakespeare’s plays.

He will present a public performance in the Eileen and Allen Anes Studio Theatre at 2 p.m. on September 29. General admission tickets are $25 and can be purchased at the Festival Ticket Office in the Beverley Center for the Arts, by calling 800-PLAYTIX, or online at www.bard.org. Advance reservations are strongly recommended.

Earlier in the day Page will perform the new play for students, including participants in the annual Shakespeare Competition, hosted by the Festival and Southern Utah University. “Patrick is joining other theatre artists who have come to adjudicate for the annual Shakespeare Competition to assist in the training of budding actors,” said Education Director Michael Bahr. “He offered to perform the play as an additional opportunity for students to learn their craft from a professional.”

Tickets to this performance are free and limited to students and their teachers. However, they must have a complimentary ticket which is available by contacting the Ticket Office in person or by calling 800-PLAYTIX. These tickets are not available online.

Page was a popular performer at the Festival from 1984 to 1989, playing such roles as Ben Jonson in Nothing Like the Sun, Iago in Othello, Jaques in As You Like It, Marcus Brutus in Julius Caesar, and the title roles in Macbeth and Richard III. He has since acted across the country and been hailed as “one of America’s leading classical actors” by the Wall Street Journal and the Washington Post.

He originated the role of the The Green Goblin in Spider-Man, Turn Off the Dark and the Grinch in How the Grinch Stole Christmas. Other New York credits include Scar in The Lion King on Broadway, the title role in Cymbeline for the New York Shakespeare Festival in Central Park, Henry VIII in A Man for All Seasons, Max in The Sound of Music at Carnegie Hall, and Jacob Marley in A Christmas Carol at Madison Square Garden.

Tickets are still on sale for the Festival’s 56th season which continues through October 21 with performances of How to Fight Loneliness, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, The Tavern, and William Shakespeare’s Long Lost First Play (abridged). For more information and tickets visit www.bard.org or call 1-800-PLAYTIX.

The Utah Shakespeare Festival is part of the Beverley Taylor Sorenson Center for the Arts at Southern Utah University, which also includes the Southern Utah Museum of Art (SUMA).

The Greenshow Presents Local Musical Groups

Utah Shakespeare Festival audiences, who have loved this year’s edition of The Greenshow, have a chance for a different treat during the last week of the popular and free pre-play entertainment. On the evenings of September 4–9, The Greenshow stage will become home to three local musical groups sure to be hits with Festival guests.

The Washburn Family Bluegrass Band will take the stage September 4 and 7. They will be followed on September 5 and 8 by the gypsy jazz band, Wilhelm. Completing the trio of entertainment will be the Festival’s own Playmakers Youth Ensemble on September 6 and 9. All shows begin at 7:10 at the Ashton Family Greenshow Commons.

These local groups take over The Greenshow stage the last week of the season because the regular company of Greenshow performers is made up of advanced students from across the country who must return to school. “But it is also a wonderful opportunity for our audiences to see the quality of our local artists,” said Michael Bahr, Festival education director. “These are three very different performing groups, but they all offer an evening of exceptional music and entertainment.”

Of course, the 2017 season is nowhere near the end. Plays will continue in both the Randall L. Jones Theatre and the Eileen and Allen Anes Studio Theatre through October 21.

The Washburn Family Bluegrass Band (September 4 and 7) consists of three sons, William on guitar, Nathan on banjo and Jacob on fiddle. They are accompanied by their mom, Emily, on bass and dad, Paul, on mandolin. They play traditional hard-driving bluegrass music. 

Wilhelm (September 5 and 8) is a gypsy jazz band consisting of violinist Heather Wilhelm, vocalist, Olivia Sham, bassist Mason Cottam, guitar/banjo player Ryan Durfee, and trumpeter Adam Lambert. While gypsy jazz (jazz Manouche) is the band’s primary focus, Wilhelm is working to create any music that swings and will get people dancing, including American standards, contemporary jazz, bossa nova, western swing, and even a little rock and pop.  

The Festival Playmakers Youth Ensemble (September 6 and 9)  is comprised of local youth ages seven to sixteen. They will perform various numbers, including several from Once on this Island, which they performed last April in Cedar City.

Tickets are now on sale for the Festival’s fifty-sixth season, which will run from June 29 to October 21. For more information and tickets visit www.bard.org or call 1-800-PLAYTIX

The Utah Shakespeare Festival is part of the Beverley Taylor Sorenson Center for the Arts at Southern Utah University, which also includes the Southern Utah Museum of Art (SUMA).

Help Us Help the Less Fortunate

The Utah Shakespeare Festival is once again collecting food for the less fortunate in our community. The 15th annual Fall Food Drive will be September 4 to October 21, with a goal to raise as much food as possible for the Iron County Care and Share.

Local residents can participate by donating six items of nonperishable food per individual on the day of the performance directly to the Festival and receive a half-price ticket to any Monday through Thursday performance. Food donation barrels will be located in the lobby of the Eileen and Allen Anes Studio Theatre, near the ticket office.                                         

“The support of our community is so critical to the success of the Utah Shakespeare Festival Fall Food Drive,” said Joshua Stavros, media and public relations manager. “Since 2003 the Festival has provided a program allowing generous and caring playgoers to see great theatre and support those less fortunate through our annual fall food drive.  And over the years, our guests have demonstrated time and time again their generosity and support of those in need by supplying food as part of a ticket purchase.”

Residents of Iron, Washington, Kane, Garfield, Sevier, Piute, and Beaver counties in Utah are eligible for the discount, as well as guests from Lincoln County, Nevada. All residents should bring proof of residency and six nonperishable food items for each discounted ticket they wish to purchase. This offer is good Monday through Thursday on the day of the performance only. There is a limit of four discounted tickets per resident I.D.

Tickets for the Festival’s 2017 season, which continues October 21, are still on sale. The plays are As You Like It, Romeo and Juliet, Shakespeare in Love, Guys and Dolls, A Midsummer Night*’s Dream, Treasure Island, The Tavern, William Shakespeare**’s Long Lost First Play (abridged),* and How to Fight Lonliness.For more information and tickets visit www.bard.org or call 1-800-PLAYTIX.

The Iron County Care and Share was founded in 1984 by a group of local churches of different denominations to address the issue of hunger in our community. Working with partners in the community, neighboring counties, and the state, the Iron County Care and Share is able to help homeless and low-income individuals and families work toward self-sufficiency. The Iron County Care and Share is located at 900 North 222 West Cedar City, Utah.

The Utah Shakespeare Festival is part of the Beverley Taylor Sorenson Center for the Arts at Southern Utah University, which also includes the Southern Utah Museum of Art (SUMA).

Diving into How to Fight Loneliness

Brian Vaughn as Brad in How to Fight Loneliness

As we get closer to the world premiere of How to Fight Loneliness, we get more and more excited. This is an opportunity for the Utah Shakespeare Festival to not only bring Neil LaBute, a major voice in American theatre, to the Festival, but to perform a major new work by him for the first time anywhere. In order to dive deeper into LaBute’s words, we sat down with director David Ivers to learn more about this engaging new play.

The story of How to Fight Loneliness surrounds a young woman, Jodie, who is struggling with a terminal illness and is faced with decisions regarding life and death. During the show, Ivers wants the audience to experience every moment of tension, comedy, and realistic language LaBute is known for. LaBute’s modern, aggressive, and honest language is what continues to draw Ivers to the playwright and How to Fight Loneliness. Like Shakespeare, LaBute’s characters experience a situation where everything is on the line.

After seeing How to Fight Loneliness, Ivers wants audiences to have discussions, but his direction and the script will not steer the conversations in any specific direction. LaBute’s plays focus on the characters, their journey, and the difficult decisions they face, all elements Ivers wants audiences to discuss after seeing the show. The circumstances and choices these characters face resonate with many central conflicts in Shakespeare’s work.

In addition, this production is opening the door for the Festival to discover new works and playwrights. How to Fight Loneliness received a staged reading as part of the Festival 2016 Words Cubed new play series, and producing this show will allow the Festival the opportunity to continue to cultivate powerful new plays like LaBute’s and discover new playwrights of the future.

The Tavern Set to Open in September

By Ryan D. Paul

Andrew May as The Vagabond in The Tavern.

Submitted for your approval—one Miss Cora Dick Gantt, a stenographer for the local Y.M.C.A. preparing herself to enjoy a night at the theatre. The year is 1920. The date is September 27. The play, The Tavern based upon her manuscript, The Choice of a Superman. She had sent this unsolicited work to Broadway producer Arthur Hopkins who had already produced over twenty shows, many of them huge hits. Hopkins passed on Gantt’s work, believing it too strange and unusual. However, he thought his friend George M. Cohan would find it worth a laugh or two. In fact, the very things that Hopkins distained, Cohan loved. Cohan would later say it was “the damnedest play I have every read in my life.”  However, what Miss Gantt was about to see, would have little resemblance to her original work. At this point, you would begin to hear Rod Serling’s famous voice-over, “You are travelling through another dimension, a dimension not only of sight and sound, but of mind. A journey into a wondrous land of imagination. Next stop, The Twilight Zone!”

Cohan had become strangely obsessed with Gantt’s play, especially some of her characters. According to The Actor’s Company Theatre, “He offered Gantt $40,000 for the complete rights to the play, including the right to make any revisions he deemed necessary. Gantt thought highly of her play and was opposed to alterations, but she liked $40,000 better” (The Actors Company Theatre, The Tavern Notes, http://tactnyc.org/the-tavern-notes/). Cohan tossed the original plot in the trash and started all over. In his autobiography, he refers to this plot dissection as “sprinkling the Cohan salt and pepper all over the script” (Ibid). What emerged that night on the stage became one of the first of its kind, a parody of a melodrama—in early twentieth-century speak, a burlesque. In our modern lexicon, the word burlesque has connotations of risqué behavior, but for Cohan’s generation, it meant something else. “Burlesque comes from burla, Spanish for “joke.” Comedy has always been an essential part of burlesque art, but it’s comedy of a particular kind. Burlesque is satirical, and it uses exaggeration that can be extreme” (https://www.vocabulary.com/dictionary/burlesque). The Tavern, essentially, became a parody of many of the serious dramatic works on the stage at the time. The catch, however, was that none of this was communicated to the audience. They were left to figure out, to process, what they were seeing on the stage for themselves.

The Tavern soon became the hit of Broadway and would run for 252 performances. Life Magazine theatre critic Robert Benchley would write of opening night “There can no longer be any doubt that George M. Cohan is the greatest man in the world. Anyone who can write The Tavern and produce it as The Tavern is produced places himself automatically in the class with the gods who sit on Olympus and emit Jovian (or is it Shavian) laughter at the tiny tots below on earth.  In fact, George M. Cohan’s laughter is much more intelligent than that of any god I ever heard of. . . . Every line and situation in it can be either serious or burlesque, according to the individual powers of discernment of the listener.  In the second act even the most naive of the newspaper writers felt the force of the burlesque and commented on it indulgently" (http://davecol8.tripod.com/id37.htm).

The Tavern takes place on a dark and stormy night (how’s that for melodrama) in a remote tavern. A wild wind blows in all sorts of oddball characters—a mysterious vagabond, who delights in the theatrics that surround the night’s events, a damsel in distress, with a mysterious past, a politician, his daughter, and her fiancé. A thief is on the loose, suspicions abound, and no one is who they seem! The Vagabond soon became Cohan’s favorite character and when original actor Arthur Daly left the show, “Cohan himself stepped in, turning the Vagabond into one of his most celebrated roles. He performed on Broadway for over a year, and continued playing the role on tour afterwards. Recognizing a virtuoso comic role to die for, Cohan revived the play ten years later in 1930, reprising his role. Even at the end of his career, Cohan couldn’t escape The Tavern, and his last completed show was a 1940 sequel called The Return of the Vagabond” (The Actors Company Theatre).

This fall, in true Cohan fashion, the Utah Shakespeare Festival will present a world-premiere adaptation of The Tavern adapted and directed by Joseph Hanreddy who recently helmed 2016’s production of Julius Caesar and co-adapted both Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice and Sense and Sensibility, the latter of which he directed for the Festival. This year’s production of The Tavern, is “set in Old West southern Utah. The whimsy and broadness of the comedy are such that there is only a superficial nod to accurate history.  As to specific period, Utah was a US Territory and not a state until 1896. Governors prior to 1896 were appointed by the U.S. President as part of a “spoils system” where government jobs, including Governorships, were given to supporters, friends and relatives as a reward for working toward political victory.  Understandably, appointed governors were not always beloved of or respected by, the first settlers.” (Joseph Hanreddy, Director’s Notes, unpublished).

Hanreddy’s adaptation of The Tavern is a mash-up of local and regional history, romantic melodramas, classic Western fiction and film, the physical comedy of silent film greats such as Buster Keaton, (check out the cyclone scene in 1928’s Steamboat Bill Jr.  (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CmyNiMjXMUw), with a little bit of Shakespeare on top. I can guarantee that as this madcap farce reaches its conclusion you will be laughing outloud.

A Living, Breathing Young Shakespeare

Quinn Mattfeld (left) as Will Shakespeare  and Jeb Burris as Ned Alleyn

By Lawrence Henley

In creating the 1998 Oscar-winning film Shakespeare in Love, British playwright Tom Stoppard (Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, Arcadia) and his screenwriting partner Marc Norman (The Aviator) sought to personify an icon: a young actor and fledgling dramatist named Will Shakespeare. Like many brilliant artists, prior to his greatest success Shakespeare was a twenty-something writer, performer, and entrepreneur, steadily rising to the top yet still struggling to fully harness his genius. Through the creativity and imagination of Stoppard and Norman, motion picture audiences were privileged to witness a living, breathing young Shakespeare that had previously been lost to time. Shakespeare in Love embodies the Bard in those formative years that spawned a creative explosion unprecedented in the history of theatre.

Indeed, through the highly lauded film, and now via the 2014 stage adaptation by Lee Hall (Billy Elliot), we become time travelers. Shakespeare in Loveprovides the vehicle whereby we are uncannily transported to witness the birth of modern theatre. Of course, the work relies on a great deal of speculation referencing the lives of Shakespeare and his colleagues, often based on unsubstantiated theories. Owing to the paucity of historical data and accounts from the Elizabethan period, the authors had little recourse to do otherwise. Still, their method provides the historical connections, whimsy, and heightened sense of the period that make this play indispensable for fans of classical theatre.

The new Engelstad Shakespeare Theatre at the Utah Shakespeare Festival is the ideal venue for a period piece such as this. Shakespeare in Love is set in the bustling red light district on the southern banks of the River Thames, the home of Shakespeare’s first theatres. While at times more fiction than fact, the play astonishingly beams us back to the year 1595. A three-year pandemic of deadly plague has recently lifted, and the wooden, tiered outdoor theatres of London have reopened. Not unlike the present day, competition for audiences and playhouse financing is cutthroat. In recreating the period, Shakespeare in Love cleverly employs an array of factual characters from Shakespeare’s everyday world. Legendary characters ranging from young Jacobean playwright John Webster to an aging Queen Elizabeth I are, to our delight, brought back to life.

At the play’s outset, one such figure, Phillip Henslowe (producer and proprietor of The Rose playhouse), is heavily in debt and under threat of violence from Fennyman, a vicious, yet witty loan shark. Henslowe is desperate to stay apace with The Curtain, the successful venue of rival actor/producer Richard Burbage (the queen’s favorite). Henslowe sorely needs a box-office hit. Enter Shakespeare’s new comedy, a work in progress. It has an peculiar working title: Romeo and Ethel, The Pirate’s Daughter.

From the outset, Romeo and Ethel is a vexed endeavor. Much to the horror of Mr. Henslowe, Shakespeare has suddenly and inexplicably lost his muse. To make matters worse, Henslowe’s house players, the great Ned Alleyn’s Admiral’s Men, are out touring the provinces and unavailable. Awkward timing necessitates a rough and uneven cast featuring a gnarly bunch of regulars from the tavern next door, Henslowe’s tailor, and a novelty act—Spot, the Dog.

Most pressing is the urgent need to dislodge Will’s seemingly impenetrable writer’s block. The plot and script for Romeo and Ethel is, thus far, dead on arrival, and his best ideas have been obtained over pints of beer from mentor Christopher “Kit” Marlowe, London’s reigning dramatist (Faustus, Edward II). Shakespeare in Love intimates that young Will “nicked” a fair number of ideas from Marlowe (whose untimely stabbing death vaulted Shakespeare into elite status). Marlowe advises Will to abandon his initial theme and characterization. A reimagined Ethel becomes Juliet, the comedy morphs into tragicomedy, and the dog becomes unemployed. Definite progress, yes, but still no flow of words out of Shakespeare’s quill. The search for inspiration has reached critical mass.

It is at this point that history and supposition collide in totality, melding into the richest blend of truth and theatrical fantasy. Crashing Burbage’s unauthorized court performance of Shakespeare’s The Two Gentlemen of Verona, Will encounters a stunningly beautiful devotee of his poetry and prose, Viola De Lesseps. Lady Viola secretly desires to be a part of the theatre, but is tragically stunted by the social constraints of her era stemming from her own nobility and the ban on women as performers. In Shakespeare’s time, attendance in the playhouses by women from the upper classes was severely frowned upon. Female roles were performed exclusively by males, typically teenagers whose voices had yet to change. The edict was regulated strictly by the caustic Mr. Tylney, London’s corrupt Master of the Revels.

Undaunted, Viola is determined to audition for a part in Shakespeare’s next play. Donning male dress she becomes “Thomas Kent.” Her natural ability and poetic depth stuns the writer. Intoxicated by her oration, Will is baffled as she flees the stage in panicked response to his unnerving request to remove her hat, concealing the hair and face of a woman. Shakespeare’s hot pursuit of Thomas instead results in a breathtaking encounter with Lady Viola, in natural dress. Afterward, their clandestine meeting becomes the inspiration for what is to become Romeo and Juliet’s famed balcony scene.

A passionate love affair ensues, sparking a creative epiphany for the playwright. Will and Viola’s torrid romance becomes the metaphor for the resulting play within a play. It is, however, a doomed relationship. Viola, in the businesslike fashion typical of the period, has been promised by her wealthy parents to the steely Earl of Wessex, an ambitious seeker of fortune and no lover of poetics. In blind disregard of hopelessness for a future together, Viola (as Thomas) is cast as Romeo. Mercifully, the Admiral’s Men and their marquee player Ned Alleyn return to London. Despite seemingly insurmountable obstacles, the company births a play for the ages.

Romeo and Juliet becomes a new high watermark in dramatic literature, perhaps the greatest romantic tale of all-time. And, for the fictional purposes of Shakespeare in Love, the gender barrier in Elizabethan Theatre is broken. No one knows, but it is conceivable that, lost to history, one of Shakespeare’s women might have taken the stage under the guise of a male. In her powerful final speech, Queen Elizabeth strongly attests that she “knows something of a woman in a man’s profession.” 

And what of the real William Shakespeare (1564–1616)? What is the truth concerning his early life? Ironically, the life of Will Shakespeare remains in large part a tantalizing and speculative mystery. Scholars have long been frustrated in their attempts to create a complete timeline of Shakespeare’s life. Unfortunately, there are lengthy, undocumented gaps during his early years which defy explanation.

Today, he is known as the most iconic of dramatists, author of (at least) thirty-seven classic plays that have withstood the turbulence of the centuries and critics alike. Many experts rate him as the finest writer of world literature who ever lived. Doubtless, Shakespeare is the most read, performed, discussed, and written about playwright to walk the earth.

Based on the scarce evidence that still exists, several theories attempt to explain the missing years of 1585-1591 Shakespeare in Love so ambitiously seeks to fill in. Without new discoveries and information, the truth is anyone’s guess. The theories are, for the most part, pure conjecture.

Existing records show he was born in Stratford-upon-Avon, April, 1564, to John Shakespeare and Mary Arden. His father was a wool merchant, a maker of fine gloves, an important town official (Stratford’s ale-taster and mayor). Mary had inherited wealth and birthed seven children (three perished prior to adolescence). William, the first to survive, was initially well-educated, but forced to quit school in the wake of John Shakespeare’s severe financial troubles. Consequently, one of the world’s greatest writers never attended college, as did many of his peers.   

Records also tell us that a nineteen-year-old Will Shakespeare was married in 1582, hastily, to a pregnant Anne Hathaway. Subsequently, there are no traces of Shakespeare from the mid-1580s until he reappears on the London scene in 1592. It is theorized that Shakespeare vanished from Stratford under the threat of imminent arrest for offenses ranging from animal poaching, tax delinquency, or conspiracy to practice Catholicism amid the strict Protestant reign of Queen Elizabeth. Some surmise that he fled Stratford, finding work as a primary schoolteacher in the North of England. Others believe he was lured to London by a touring theatre troupe, the Queen’s Men.  

Whatever the truth, Shakespeare in Love deliciously and repeatedly references gems from Shakespeare’s text. Abundant quotes and references from Romeo and Juliet, Macbeth, and All’s Well That Ends Well are inserted liberally. Best of all, the poignant ending engenders the creation of Will’s finest comedy, Twelfth Night. While it’s doubtful that we shall ever learn what actually transpired during Shakespeare’s lost years, we can revel in Shakespeare in Love’s marvelous reconstruction.

Q&A with Shakespeare in Love

Betsy Mugavero as Viola de Lesseps.

Creating a stage play from a movie can be fraught with problems, most notably the inclination most of us have of comparing the different genres. When the Utah Shakespeare Festival first announced it was one of three theatres in the country granted the rights to produce Shakespeare in Love, the stage play adapted from a movie, our loyal patrons were excited, but had a number of questions: “How closely does the play follow the plot of the movie?” “Will it have the magic, humor, and entertainment value of the movie?” “Who will play the leading roles?” “Will it be rated R, like the movie?”

Now that the play has been running at the Festival for over a month, the questions (we think) all have answers:

How closely does the play follow the plot of the movie?

Actually, fairly closely. There are always differences between film and live theatre, but the script (which was adapted for the stage by Lee Hall) is quite true to the general storyline: Young Will Shakespeare has writer’s block, but finances demand he have a new play—soon. Viola de Lesseps wants to break the Elizabethan prohibition of women appearing on stage by acting in one of Shakespeare’s plays—disguised as a man. Most problems are solved when Viola disguises herself as Thomas Kent and earns a role in Shakespeare’s next play and when Viola (out of costume and in her “women’s weeds”) wins Will’s heart and becomes his muse. Of course, it is much more textured than a couple of pithy sentences can describe; the plot is enhanced by transferring it to the stage with live characters and audience reactions.

Does it have the magic, humor, and entertainment value of the movie?

This question, of course, demands a subjective answer, but our audiences uniformly have loved the play, and the professional reviewers have heaped it with praise. For instance, Bruce Bennett addressed both of these questions in the St. George News: “The well-known film . . . is followed closely by Lee Hall’s brilliant stage adaptation. . . . Coupled with director Brian Vaughn’s lively direction, the Festival’s version is lighter, funnier, and overall more entertaining than the excellent movie.” Carol Cling, writing in the Las Vegas Review-Journal agrees: “Happily . . . the delightful regional premiere of Shakespeare in Love at the Utah Shakespeare Festival proves equally at home on stage. Which is more than we can say for far too many screen-to-stage transfers.”

Who is playing the leading roles?

The movie starred Gwyneth Paltrow as Viola de Lesseps and Joseph Fiennes as Will Shakespeare. But we (in our humble opinion) think our leading actors—and all the actors in the play—outshine any of Hollywood. Russell Warne said in his review for Utah Theatre Bloggers Association (UTBA): “What is most refreshing about Shakespeare in Love is Quinn Mattfeld’s portrayal of realistic Shakespeare.” Then, “Adding to the joy of Shakespeare in Love is Betsy Mugavero in the role of Viola de Lesseps. Her character’s giddy excitement at auditioning in disguise for a play was an endearing moment that won me over to the entire production.”

Is it rated R, like the movie?

In a word, no. We have strived to make this an accessible production for young and old, including eliminating the nudity that was in the movie. Ashley Ramsey put it succinctly for Front Row Reviewers Utah: “This show has nothing that a tween or teen (or their parents) would find objectionable.” Michelle Garrett Bulsiewicz wrote in the Deseret News: “The play removes all the nudity and other content that gave the movie its R-rating, leaving it a solid PG-13 that would still be appropriate for older children and adults. Russell Warne (UTBA) may have summed it up best: “If my children were teenagers, I would worry more about them seeing The Taming of the Shrew than Shakespeare in Love.”

So, there you have it, answers to the most common questions we have received about Shakespeare in Love. We hope you join us this summer for what is surely “a hit, a very palpable hit” (Russell Warne, UTBA, quoting from Shakespeare in Love quoting from Hamlet).