Finally got to check out the Utah Shakespeare Festival last night so crossing that off my “Puck”et list.
Hard to believe the festival is celebrating its fiftieth anniversary this year. Last time I tried to attend, I was still a teenager. Scored some free tickets at the last minute and hopped in a car with my g-friend and we tried to beat the clock, racing down I-15 like, well, like two teenagers. We didn’t make it. Must have been half way down to Cedar City before it finally dawned on us that there was no way in hell we ever would. Ah, impetuous youth. Shakespeare probably has a quote about that. How about this one?:
“Crabbed age and youth cannot live together:
Youth is full of pleasure, age is full of care;
Youth like summer morn, age like winter weather;
Youth like summer brave, age like winter bare.”
That’s another thing we didn’t have back then: the internet. But I digress.
So I had to choose between Romeo and Juliet and The Music Man. There were more (and better) seats for the latter and I’ve never seen it before, though I do remember perhaps catching part of a Matthew Broderick television adaptation years ago.
‘Twas an enjoyable night of theater. The crowd was ecstatic. Don’t think I’ve ever witnessed such an appreciative crowd before. Lots of memorable songs. I think my favorite was “Wells Fargo Wagon”:
O-ho the Wells Fargo Wagon is a-comin’ down the street,
Oh please let it be for me!
O-ho the Wells Fargo Wagon is a-comin’ down the street,
I wish, I wish I knew what it could be!
The story, if you don’t know it, is about a traveling salesman who goes by the nom de guerre “Professor Harry Hill.” Hill ends up conning the entire town into buying instruments and uniforms for a boys’ band that will never be. There’s a moment, late in the final act, after he’s been arrested, where he’s about to get tarred and feathered. Suddenly, and perhaps because I’ve spent the entire day looking at Mormon sites, I’m thinking, hey, this guy is Joseph Smith. Then in comes the boys’ band, marching down the aisles in their shining new uniforms.
Someone hands the phony professor the baton. What would you do? Play along, of course! Fake it till you make it. Harry Hill hams it up. The kids respond with what can only be called noise since they’ve never actually learned how to play their instruments, having been taught Harry Hill’s revolutionary new “think” system. They stink! But the townsfolk are none the wiser and end up embracing both Harry and his music.
Is it better to maintain your illusions at any cost so long as they keep you feeling elated?
Hey, this was just a night of light musical Americana so sorry to be so heavy handed. I probably should have tried to catch the matinee of The Glass Menagerie instead.
Blow out your candles, Laura.