That's Entertainment

During our motorhome travels over the years, one of the things we have enjoyed doing is going to local theater venues. The Oregon Shakespeare Festival in Ashland is generally fabulous and we have been there three or four times, usually staying a few days and taking in a couple of plays. We have also been to the repertory theater in Creed, Colorado and used to go fairly frequently to the Great American Melodrama in Oceano, California near Pismo Beach.  Some of the theaters we've gone too are in what seem to be odd, out of the way places, but the production quality has been surprisingly good

Our son at USF from a previous trip

On our most recent trip, we went to the Utah Shakespeare Festival in Cedar City. We had done this a couple of times before and the quality and professionalism there are very high.

We stopped on the way to South Dakota for a couple of nights and saw a Moliére play called Scapin which is a farcical comedy. It was actually quite funny although I don't know how much credit for that can be given to Moliére. The play had to be translated from French but they also took the opportunity to modernize much of the humor including references to modern pop songs and TV shows that Moliére had obviously never heard of. That was probably a good thing. I looked up a somewhat more literal translation of the play online and I imagine a modern audience would have found few belly laughs in it. The Utah version followed the same general plot but included little of the original language. In any event, we enjoyed the show very much.

On the way back home, we stopped by for one night and saw Les Miserables. I have never seen this musical before despite its being one of the longest-running Broadway shows in history. I thought the production was very well done and the singing was outstanding. I found the story itself a bit maudlin and it did not inspire a burning passion for me to go and read Victor Hugo. Still and all, it was a great experience and I certainly would recommend the show to anyone traveling to that area in the next couple of weeks.

Hobnobbing with the Bard

As part of our planning for going full-time, we would like to do more of this. It does require a certain amount of forethought. In some venues you are unlikely to be able to get seats at the last minute and the plays do have limited runs, so you have to make sure you're going to be in the right place at the right time.

There is an outfit called the League of Resident Theatres (http://www.lort.org/) which includes 75 local repertory companies located throughout the United States and at their website you can see what might be coming up in the areas you plan to be visiting. Hopefully we will be able to use this information to our advantage when we have the time and mobility to utilize it.