Lots of family in town this weekend for a party. The weather has been sunny but not too hot. Truman is happy to have lots of friends to play ball with him, but sometimes he just needs a little down time under the (cool) shrubbery.
I hope everyone is having a fine weekend too.
“This can be a quick one. Don’t take too long to think about it. Fifteen books you’ve read that will always stick with you. First fifteen you can recall in no more than 15 minutes.”
Nine years ago, the CEO of a local bank had the idea that St. Louisans should be able to watch Shakespeare for free in a park and the Shakespeare Festival of St. Louis was born.
I've only been twice. I went two years ago when they produced Much Ado About Nothing as a western. I tried to go last year to see Richard III but we were rained out. Despite the buckets of rain that fell last week, I managed to see this year's production of The Merry Wives of Windsor. I'm not sure why I didn't go to the festival in the early years. I think it was because I also have season opera tickets in May/June and that's a lot of culture to fit into a short period.
I like Shakespeare and it seems as if I see at least one production of a Shakespeare play somewhere every year. But I never know what to say about his plays. After all, everything that could be said has been said. This year's production was a new experience for me; I had never seen Merry Wives before (although I had seen the Verdi opera that is based on it).
I remembered Falstaff from the Henry cycle (which I've seen in various places over the years) and so I was also familiar with Bardolph, Pistol and Mistress Quickly. I didn't realize that this play was a departure from the Henry plays not only in tenor but in time.
And this particular production was even more outside of time because they "updated" the story by placing it in the 1920's. The characters were dressed in 1920's middle class style similar to what you'd see in old movies. At first I wasn't sure if this idea was going to work but I eventually changed my mind. Putting Falstaff in the laundry basket is the kind of slapstick that old silent films would have loved.
I thought Daniel Talbot as Master Ford was particularly good - switching easily between Ford's jealous rage and Ford's disguise as the hilariously funny Master Brook. Most of the rest of the cast was also good. The set was clever with many doors and windows for characters to open and shut. Here's a photo from my iphone:
The productions take place in what is now known as Shakespeare Glen in Forest Park. This is a gently sloping hill located between the Art Museum and the Zoo. I'm not sure why they chose this location for doing a Shakespeare Festival. There is a 10,000 seat outdoor ampitheater in the park less than a mile away. But I suppose they wanted people to be able to sit on the grass or in their lawn chairs rather than in stadium seats on concrete. And the total audience for the whole festival is only 50,000. And they wanted it to be free.
Some much needed improvements were made to Shakespeare Glen over the winter. Drainage was added so there is no longer a bog when it rains. The plans also call for planting a grove of trees to form (eventually) a natural sound barrier. This is a good idea. The beginning of our performance was marred by the sounds of 70's disco music coming from the World's Fair Pavilion a couple of hills over, where a party was evidently going on.
But it was a beautiful night. Next year's production will be Hamlet. I can't wait to see Queen Gertrude.
Mary Jo Murphy, writing for The New York Times, connects the dots to find out what Sandra Day O'Connor, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Sonia Sotomayor have in common. A childhood love of Nancy Drew, it turns out. She then tries to figure out why Nancy appealed to these three high achieving women when they were children.
It wasn't the plots ("formulaic") or the writing. Murphy thinks it was this:
“The real allure of Nancy Drew is that, almost uniquely among classic or modern heroines, she can follow — is allowed to follow — a train of thought,” wrote Sandra Tsing Loh, reviewing Melanie Rehak’s “Girl Sleuth,” a biography of Nancy Drew’s creators, in The Atlantic. “The plot opens ever outward for her, her speeding blue convertible a metaphor for the sure-shot arrow of her intellect, the splendidly whizzing shaft of the maiden huntress Diana.”
Sounds right to me. What I loved about Nancy Drew when I was a kid was the idea that she had the intellect to figure things out. She also had the time and the money to spend time figuring things out. And friends who wanted to help her figure things out. A perfect combination.
At one point my sister and I had, between us, every Nancy Drew book in publication. They are still at my mother's house because we can't split them up.
My favorite(s)? I liked so many. I really liked The Mystery of the Brass Bound Trunk (in which she traveled to South America) and The Mystery of the Fire Dragon (in which she went to New York and Hong Kong). But I have a real soft spot in my heart for The Witch Tree Symbol in which Nancy travels in Amish country, because that was the first Nancy Drew book I ever read.
Writer John Scalzi paints a picture of himself in a Portrait of a Closet Introvert that I could have written word for word about myself.
Well, except for the part about being a writer and going on book tours etc. But, other than that, you know, word for word.
I spent this evening in Forest Park, a 1,293 acre jewel in the heart of St. Louis. Larger than Central Park in New York, it is the area of St. Louis that was the site of the 1904 St. Louis World's Fair.
For a few weeks each May/June it is the site of, among other things, the Shakespeare Festival of St. Louis which this year is presenting The Merry Wives of Windsor. More on that in a later post perhaps.
For those who live in urban areas there is nothing better than spending time in a park. It is a time honored tradition. As I looked at the Sunday crowd gathered in the park I was reminded of Georges Seurat's famous painting that now hangs in the Chicago Art Institute: Sunday on the Island of La Grand Jatte. Here is is:
This little reproduction doesn't do it justice. It is a HUGE painting and it is composed of millions of tiny little dots of color. In Ferris Bueller's Day Off there is a scene at the Art Institute that involves this painting and shows the detail:
It is possible to stand in front of the painting and imagine all the people in it as they were in real life when Seurat took his sketch pad to the Island on a summer afternoon and watched the people of Paris taking their leisure. Stephen Sondheim imagined it so well that he created an entire musical theater piece, Sunday in the Park with George, out of it. And that seems appropriate too because whether it is Shakespeare in the Park in New York or the Shakespeare Festival here in Forest Park, the tradition of gathering in parks, under the trees, for music and theater is also a time honored tradition.