It’s No Longer the Southern Utah That I Knew as a Child

Last updated on: October 19, 2017 at 8:00 am by Dan Peterson

It’s No Longer the Southern Utah That I Knew as a Child 2017-10-19T08:00:14-06:00 Dan Peterson

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The new and very-soon-to-be-dedicated Cedar City Utah Temple, in an iPhone photograph taken by my wife this evening after the play.

We’re down here in southern Utah to take in the Fall 2017 plays at the Utah Shakespeare Festival in Cedar City. (What can I say? I married a theater major.)

Last night, Thursday, we attended a performance of William Shakespeare’s Long Lost First Play (Abridged). It’s a rollicking farce in which three male actors play the Chorus, Antipholus, Dromio of Syracuse, Puck, Oberon, Holofernes, Ariel, Hamlet, Lady Macbeth, the Dauphin, Mistress Quickly, Sir John Falstaff, Proteus, Valentine, Juliet, Richard III, Beatrice, the First Witch (from Macbeth), the Second Witch, the Third Witch, Bottom the Weaver, Viola, Cesario, Pompey, Cardenio, Pericles, King Lear, Prospero, Marina, Bear, Cleopatra, Richard II, Kate, Sycorax, Goneril, Cordelia, Regan, Henry IV, Henry V, Henry VIII, “Malvoliago,” Petruchio, Caliban, Julius Caesar, Timon of Athens, Dromio of Ephesus, and William Shakespeare.

Ariel and Puck, you see, are at war with each other. And the rest of the characters, their pawns, are all mashed up into one insane and rather slapstick story, written by Reed Martin and Austin Tichenor.

There’s no great depth or meaning to it — and it pretends to none — but it’s very funny. And it was acted with remarkable energy (not to mention velocity).

***

Tonight, Friday, we’re just back from the performance of another farce.

This one was The Tavern, by George M. Cohan, in a new adaptation by Joseph Hanreddy, who also directed it. He opted to place the tavern of the title in southern Utah, and there are many references to Utah, Salt Lake City, Parowan, and etc., throughout the play. Like William Shakespeare’s Long Lost First Play (Abridged) — though, obviously, not to quite the same degree — it’s absolutely jam packed with quotations from Shakespeare. And it’s very funny.

***

One of my regrets is that we’ll almost certainly miss the pre-dedication open house for the new Cedar City Utah Temple, which begins on 27 October. We drove by the temple yesterday and, after the play, again tonight. (We wanted to see it lit up.) It has a very striking location, viewed from the southbound I-15.

***

Before the play tonight, we met up with two other couples that we know — they’re down to see the plays at Tuacahn, near St. George (where we, too, are staying) — for dinner at Benja’s Thai Garden. The food was quite good. I marvel, though, at the changes that have occurred since I was a little boy, coming up once or twice each year from California to visit relatives in Utah (including St. George). There was virtually nothing in St. George in those days. And a Thai restaurant? Unthinkable. You could pretty much choose between Dick’s Cafe, the Big Hand Cafe, and one other. (All three of those are long gone, I think.)

Moreover, if I’m not mistaken, the St. George Temple was off on the edge of town, with nothing on the one side but desert. But my mother, who grew up in St. George, always remembered hearing about a prophecy, locally attributed to Brigham Young, that the day would come when that temple stood in the middle of a prosperous city. As, in fact, it now does:

The St. George Utah Temple glows at nightfall in the center of St. George proper. The major suburban areas of Washington and Bloomington are not shown in this photo from the Utah Chamber of Commerce. (Wikimedia Commons public domain)

Posted from St. George, Utah

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