Wherefore Art Thou in Utah

I am sitting idly beneath the shade of a tall pine, seeking relief from the daytime temperature of 104 while watching two teenagers gesturing wildly and talking in exaggerated tones. The language they speak is English, but odd to the ear.

Behind me rise the brick and half-timbered walls of a building resembling the Old Globe Theater in London. Strolling the grounds are peddlers, simply costumed in peasant blouses and long skirts, with flower wreaths entwined in their hair. They are carrying baskets and barking out to passersby their wares of pastries, candies and other edible treats and souvenirs.

The two teenagers are drama students rehearsing a scene outdoors. The peddlers are costumed workers. And a ridge of rust-stained rock rising to the east of town reminds me that I am at the Utah Shakespearean Festival, held on the campus of Southern Utah University in Cedar City every summer from late June through early September.

On this midsummer’s day my teenage daughter Meera and I are surrounded by the works and words of William Shakespeare, and the hot air is saturated with thespian possibilities.

I was surprised to learn of the festival from a colleague, and was even more surprised to hear that it has gone on here every summer for 37 years. Who knew?

Its more famous and older cousin, the Oregon Shakespeare Festival in Ashland, has a longer season (eight months versus 10 weeks in Utah) and bigger audiences. But the full-house crowds two weekends ago at performances in Cedar City attest to its popularity. And the two festivals share many features, among them seminars and backstage tours. Like Ashland, Cedar City’s plays, casts and productions are all world-class. Ticket prices are similar too. I haven’t been to Ashland to compare, but Utah has one immediate advantage that I can see: It’s closer by about 300 miles to Southern California.

Still, at 450 miles from Los Angeles, Cedar City is not easy for a weekend trip.

Thinking that it was was my first mistake. Meera and I came here for a quick three-day fix, and as a result gave the drama-worthy festival and the scenic surroundings short shrift.

Perched at an elevation of 5,800 feet, Cedar City lies just off I-15 between the Escalante Desert and the Markagunt Plateau. It was founded by Mormon pioneers sent by Brigham Young to mine the nearby high country for iron ore.

It is about seven hours’ drive through desert terrain from L.A., four hours from Salt Lake City, and about three from Las Vegas. Easiest and fastest of all the options is to fly into Las Vegas, rent a car and drive the extra three hours northeast on Interstate 15 to Cedar City.

Driving off the exit ramp, my first sight of Cedar City, population about 28,000, was a strip of hotels and clustered fast-food joints. Where were the B&Bs; with the cute puns in their names, the eateries with Elizabethan connections? I had expected quaint and touristy, and found a small, quiet town where life is not total Bard-om.

The festival is big business here, nevertheless. In its first two-week season in 1962, three of Shakespeare’s plays were staged on a small outdoor stage by an army of volunteers and town residents; 3,276 people attended. Last year, the Utah Shakespearean Festival drew 135,000 play-goers during its 10-week season. And there are plans to build an Elizabethan village about two city blocks long.

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On the campus of Southern Utah University, tall evergreens shade the courtyard adjacent to two of the three theaters where the plays are staged: the 887-seat Adams Memorial Shakespearean Theatre, which is outdoors, and the indoor Auditorium Theatre. The 769-seat Randall L. Jones Theatre built in 1989, has superb acoustics. The Adams, experts have said, is a good replication of the original Globe; the BBC came here a few years ago to use it in filming a Shakespeare documentary.

For us, the plays were the thing--the entire thing--and that was mistake No. 2.

The festival has much to offer besides plays. We missed the literary, music and costume seminars and play orientations because we didn’t have the time. We arrived too late in the day Friday to see the Plays in Progress readings. We passed on the Royal Feaste, a five-course meal (eaten, as Renaissance custom dictates, with no utensils) enlivened by the antics of characters from “A Midsummer Night’s Dream.”

But we sandwiched in a few things from the festival list of extra-curricular activities. Friday night we watched the free Greenshow, staged outdoors every night but Sunday in the courtyard behind the Adams Theatre. The Revels Company, a troupe of costumed singers, actors, dancers and musicians, energetically staged skits, told silly jokes, sang and danced before evening play performances, mingling with the dense audience. The atmosphere was vaudeville meets the Renaissance Pleasure Faire. The audience, much of it families with babies along, was enthusiastic.

Saturday morning we took a fascinating 1 1/2-hour-long backstage tour with a warm, chatty guide, Maren Maclean, who also appears as “Titania” at the Royal Feaste. (That weekend we saw many of the same faces popping up in various plays and places, a testament to the versatility of the members of the repertory.)

Maclean dished out facts about the three theaters, the festival, costuming and all the detail work that goes into planning and staging a production along with gossip and juicy tidbits on the hard and uncertain life of an actor. We saw costumes used in that day’s productions, and workers pushing props and sets. Three to four plays are mounted every day six days of the week, and huge, elaborate sets are stored in their entirety backstage, allowing sets for different plays to be changed within hours.

We learned what a “vomitory” was (a stage entrance located in the audience seats), and were horrified by the realistic and gory severed head used in “King John.” (The head inspired us to hastily add “King John” to the two plays we already had tickets for.)

Ironically, of the festival’s six plays, this year’s hit is not Shakespeare but Tim Rice and Andrew Lloyd Webber. The production of “Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dream Coat” has proved so popular that extra shows have been added. “Relative Values” by Noel Coward is the other non-Shakespeare offering in the lineup.

Meera and I started on Friday night with “Romeo and Juliet” in the Randall L. Jones and took in the next day’s matinee performance of “The Taming of the Shrew” in the Auditorium Theatre.

But our hands-down favorite was the performance of “King John,” which we had almost skipped. The history was staged in the outdoor Adams Theater under a warm, changeable night sky. The air felt hot and thick with the threat of a storm. But we hardly noticed, so completely absorbed were we in the tale. Even the usual intrusions--the hard plastic seats, car alarms and sirens--scarcely bothered us. We were moved by poor Constance’s plight, saddened by the death of the young boy Arthur, shocked and angered at the infamy of King John.

We saw three Shakespeare plays in 48 hours, but we weren’t bored. By the beginning of our second performance of the weekend, Meera turned to me and said with shy enthusiasm, “Let’s come back here next year.” She’s never endorsed any of our trips that way.

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We stayed two nights at the Abbey Inn, a comfortable, clean and reasonably priced establishment in the heart of the fast-food jungle (a Shoney’s restaurant is next door) near the I-15 exit. There are other chain motels to choose from in town, and a smattering of B&Bs; recommended by the festival.

In the heat, we ate light for breakfasts and lunches, grabbing scones and iced coffees one morning at the Brick House Cafe, a simple coffeehouse decorated with ceramics done by local artists. It was refreshing to be in a town without a Starbucks. For lunch we ate from the concession at the festival, where each time we bought something we were shortchanged. We drank copious amounts of water and lemonade. (Nonalcoholic beverages were about all there was to drink in Cedar City. This was my first encounter with the “dry” condition of the land of Latter-day Saints, and each time we ventured out for dinners we ended up in a restaurant without a liquor license. Wanting just one glass of wine, I had to content myself with glasses of sour lemonade.)

Meera had a bigger problem: She was a vegetarian in a land of steak and potato eaters. We filled up at the salad bar at Shoney’s, and dined on pasta at the Pasta Garden the first day. On Saturday, we ate at Adriana’s, a so-so restaurant housed in a restored historic home.

Sunday is truly a day of rest in Utah, and the festival basically shuts down except for a couple of seminars. I thought there was little to do but pack up our playbills and go home. That was mistake No. 3.

The city is surrounded by national parks only short driving distances away. Zion National Park and the Grand Canyon lie to south, the alpine meadows of Dixie National Forest to the west and north, and to the east Bryce Canyon National Park and the country’s newest national monument, Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument.

Planning our route home, I decided on a small detour, heading east on Utah Highway 14 and climbing another 5,000 feet to Cedar Breaks National Monument.

The Mormon pioneers who came this way called the badlands landscape here “breaks,” a vast understatement when you see the steep and deep chasm at the national monument. Having been an Easterner for most of my life, I was woefully naive about the beauty of the West, and in particular the Southwest. I learned that day, though. Standing at the edge of the massive red rock and limestone amphitheater, more than a mile deep and punctuated with arches, dainty rock spires and columns, I could only stare and gasp.

Even that view was upstaged a few dozen miles later in Zion National Park. We paid the $10 entrance fee to the park and joined the snake of cars on Utah 9. The highway took us through two tunnels hewn out of the mountain, and spit us out facing the awesome red cliffs of Zion Canyon, carved by the Virgin River. I looked down at the water. It looked like a paltry creek; this wore away these sheer 2,000- to 3,000-foot walls?

Frederick Vining Fisher, a Methodist minister passing this way in the late 1800s, was seized with a religious fever when he gazed at the wonders of Zion; he named some of its rock formations the Angel’s Throne, the Altar of Sacrifice, the Great White Throne, the West Temple.

As I drove out of the park headed for I-15 and home, I was similarly uplifted. Shakespeare and Zion, a perfect pairing for two wonders of the Western World. Who knew?

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GUIDEBOOK

Bard on the Rocks

Getting there: There’s service from LAX to Cedar City, Utah, connecting through Salt Lake City on Delta; fares begin at $158 round trip. Or fly to Las Vegas and rent a car to Cedar City; LAX-Las Vegas fares begin at $76 on Southwest, Northwest, United, America West, Reno Air, Delta and Alaska.

Utah Shakespearean Festival: The festival is located on the campus of Southern Utah University at 351 W. Center St. It runs through Sept. 5 this year, with plays staged every day but Sunday. Next year’s season runs June 24-Sept. 4, with a fall season from Sept. 16-Oct. 16. Ticket prices: $10-$38; weekend shows higher; Greenshows and seminars free; backstage tour is $7 per person; Royal Feaste $29 per person. Call (800) 752-9849 or (435) 586-7878 for ticket information. Or reserve via the Internet at https://www.bard.org.

Where to stay: Abbey Inn, 940 W. 200 North, Cedar City, Utah 84720; telephone (800) 325-5411 or (435) 586-9966. Rates from $81, double occupancy. Also within walking distance of the festival: Best Western El Rey, tel. (800) 688-6518; rates from $79 double occupancy. And Best Western Town and Country Inn, tel. (435) 586-9900; $86 double. Among the B&Bs; in town: The Bard’s Inn, tel. (435) 586-6612; the Desert Blossom Bed and Breakfast Inn, tel. (435) 867-4691; the Garden Cottage Bed and Breakfast, tel. (435) 586-4919.

Where to eat: Pasta Garden in Boomer’s Main Street Plaza, 5 N. Main St.; local tel. 586-5152; entrees start at $6. Adriana’s, 164 S. 100 West; tel. 865-1234; entrees from $8.

For more information: Utah Travel Council, Council Hall/Capitol Hill, 300 N. State St., Salt Lake City, UT 84114; tel. (800) 200-1160 or (801) 538-1030, fax (801) 538-1399, Internet https://www.utah.com.