The Bard, Act II
Fall Season begins tonight
By KELSEY BLACKWELL
UNIVERSITY JOURNAL
The fall season of the Utah Shakespearean Festival will
run Sept. 19 through Oct. 19 and will offer students the
opportunity to see award-winning theatre at discounted
prices.
Students can get tickets for half price 30 minutes before
a performance or purchase tickets for $5 on Thursdays.
Donna Law, director of marketing and public relations
for the Festival, said she urges students to take advantage
of the opportunity.
“Tickets are available for every performance so
students need to know they can still go,” Law said.
This season a third Shakespearean play was added in hopes
of drawing a bigger crowd.
“We thought audiences might be more enticed to come
if Shakespeare was part of the mix, and so far it’s
true,” Law said.
Ticket sales thus far are more than last fall’s
season by 40 percent, with roughly half of those tickets
grossing from the added play Twelfth Night.
I Hate Hamlet by Paul Rudnick and You’re a Good
Man, Charlie Brown, which is based on the comic strip
“Peanuts” by Charles M. Schulz, also will
be performed this fall.
Law said she believes students will enjoy I Hate Hamlet.
“Student’s will love I Hate Hamlet,”
she said. “It’s set in 1992 and I think it’s
something that they’ll be able to relate to.”
I Hate Hamlet begins with Andrew Rally, a young star of
a canceled television series who is making a new home
in New York City.
Rally is unhappy to find he is living in an ancient brownstone
that once belonged to legendary actor John Barrymore and
has been cast as Hamlet in his next play, a role that
coincidentally the late Barrymore also played.
A séance takes place in Rally’s apartment
with Rally’s agent, Lillian Troy, his girlfriend,
Deirdre McDavey and his real estate agent, Felicia Dantine,
in hopes of talking to Barrymore.
It is after Rally’s entourage leaves that Barrymore
appears to Rally and coaches him on both acting and the
ways of love.
After Rally’s weak performance of Hamlet later in
the play, he must decide whether he wants to continue
with stage acting or return to Hollywood.
According to the Utah Shakespearean Festival’s synopsis,
You’re a Good Man Charlie Brown is told through
a series of vignettes that mimic the format of the original
comic strip.
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Corliss Preston (left) as Olivia and Richard
Kinter as Sir Toby Belch in the Utah Shakespearean
Festival’s 2002 production of Twelfth Night.
Karl Hugh / FOR THE JOURNAL
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The scope of the play is an average day in the life of
Charlie Brown and is broken into two acts.
The play begins with Charlie Brown and Linus talking. Later
the rest of the Peanuts gang, Patty, Schroeder, Lucy and
Snoopy, are introduced. All of the characters share their
observations of Charlie Brown, which makes up the entire
play.
According to the Festival’s synopsis, Twelfth Night
introduces Viola and Sebastian, twins who have been separated
after a shipwreck.
Viola, thinking her brother is dead, disguises herself as
a man, Cesario, and enters the service of Duke Orsino, who
is in love with Olivia. Orsino asks Cesario/Viola to woo
Lady Olivia in his behalf.
Olivia, who has been in morning for seven years over her
dead brother, refuses to accept the advances of any man,
but ends up falling in love with Viola/Cesario and admits
her love.
Meanwhile, Viola’s twin brother, Sebastian, unaware
that Viola is still alive, arrives in Llyria with the sea
captain, Antonio, who happens to be an outlaw in the land
of Llyria.
Cesario gets in a duel with Sir Aguecheek, a wealthy but
foolish knight. Antonio rushes to help Cesario, thinking
she is Sebastian and is arrested by the duke’s men.
Aguecheek rushes to complete the duel with Cesario but encounters
Sebastian instead, who ultimately wounds the knight.
Olivia interferes and leads Sebastian to a priest, thinking
he is Cesario and marries him, and so the play continues
until everything is made clear. |
