“The Greater Escape”

“The Greater Escape” July 24, 2016

 

Engelstad Theater Beverley Center for the Arts
The new Engelstad Theater in Cedar City
(Photograph by my wife)

 

We’ve been down in Cedar City for the Utah Shakespearean Festival, which is one of the very greatest things in the state and in the region.  In fact, it’s a national treasure.

 

We’re veterans.  We’ve attended every year for something like a quarter of a century.  Maybe a bit longer.

 

Yesterday, we saw The Cocoanuts (a stage version of the old Marx Brothers movie) and The Three Musketeers.  It was, shall we say, a rather light day.  I tried and I tried to find an idea in The Cocoanuts, but I failed.  (The music is by Irving Berlin, but — I’m trying to recall — I think the screenplay itself was written by Aeschylus.  Or maybe Jean-Paul Sartre.)

 

Today began light, as well.  A very solid production of Mary Poppins.  In the evening, though, we saw a fine presentation of Shakespeare’s Henry V.

 

For some reason, I’ve always really liked one particular passage — both the melody and the sentiment — from the Mary Poppins song “Feed the Birds”:

 

All around the cathedral, the saints and apostles

Look down as she sells her wares.

Although you can’t see it, you know they are smiling

Each time someone shows that he cares.

 

And, this afternoon, I got a special kick out of that passage because, as a matter of fact, there was a member of the Council of the Twelve seated a few rows behind us and to our right.  He was wearing neither suit nor white shirt nor tie, and — probably because he’s one of the three newest apostles (though, for reasons of his privacy, I won’t identify him) — almost nobody there seems to have recognized him.  (He was also in the audience for Henry V.)

 

I was, by the way, shocked to see a number of empty seats at Henry V.  It’s a magnificent play.  Why were there empty seats?

 

This year has been interesting because the Beverley Taylor Sorenson Center for the Arts (also called, simply, the “Beverley Center for the Arts”) opened earlier this month.  It includes the new Southern Utah Museum of Art, the previously existing Randall Jones Theater, the new Engelstad Theater, and several other major facilities.  The Adams Shakespearean Theater, where we’ve attended scores of plays, is no longer to be used.  Maybe (I haven’t looked) it’s even been demolished.  But the Engelstad preserves its general shape, which, in turn, was based upon the Globe Theater of Elizabethan London.

 

I knew Beverley Taylor Sorenson somewhat, as also her husband, the late James L. Sorenson, after whom the Physical Education Building at Southern Utah University here in Cedar City is named.  And some of their family.  I liked them very much, and I’m pleased to see their names commemorated in a place that has meant so much to me and my wife.

 

Posted from Cedar City, Utah

 

 


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