Romeo and Juliet
The introduction? Should scream, “Spoiler alert!” The first two-dozen lines give away the plot, the story, and the tragic outcome.
Chatting, over coffee with a couple from Cali?
“She was my teacher at UC Merced, we did Shakespeare in the park, there. Had to come see her.”
“Yeah,” her companion said, “family in Dallas, I had to ask about a barn. In Texas. The heat. The humidity.”
They were off to see Prince Hal and Hotspur duke it out with commentary from Falstaff.
Why I prefer the evening shows, but I’m old, tired, and cranky.
Romeo and Juliet
Shakespeare’s play, The Tragedy of Romeo and Juliet is one of the more well-known titles. Couple of famous movie versions, and I’ve seen both, in recent memory, and each has a different take. The updated version was fun.
The farmhouse where we stayed on this trip? A vacation rental, less than a mile from the UT Shakespeare Winedale performance area? First off, it was “farmhouse chic,” and as such, it was perfect. Set next to a pasture, the aesthetics worked just fine. It wasn’t “kitschy,” it was rural in a rural setting. On the porch, a single, large writing spider spun her web.
We got to be friends, I’d like to think, me and the spider with her web. Caught a small roach in the house, one evening, and instead of squashing the bug, I went outside and tossed it up into the web. On a previous evening, I watched as she spun her web around a large, very dead grasshopper.
“Grasshoppers like that, high in protein, good food source.”
Not met with universal acknowledgement as a good idea. That evening, the spider did dine sumptuously. I kept trying to recall which native mythology used the Spider Woman as the one who spins our webs of fate.
The kid playing Romeo was outstanding, and we know how this ends: not well. He used the rafters, and that made the play’s production feel more three dimensional, with the great Queen Mab speech, Mercutio dragged that out throughout the barn’s limited coverage, up and down the aisles.
One place we stayed, there were writing spiders at all four corners of the shed, and several on the porch. Didn’t bother me, and someplace, I’ve got pictures. In this place, there was jut the one on the porch. When we first arrived, the rental hadn’t been cleaned and the manger met us, made dismissive comments about the spider, and I suggested that the writing spiders are good luck. Fewer bugs, and the writing itself? Lets us know where the web is.
Checking out the latest morning, after the Romeo and Juliet show? I kept thinking about that spinner, the web of fate as spun by the spider woman, and what was ahead by looking backwards.
Kid sitting in front of us, walking out after the show?
“That sucks. Would’ve worked out if their parent had just left them alone.”
Yeah, about that?
Romeo and Juliet
Previously at Winedale 2021 & 2016.
(Pulp Romeo and Juliet)
The Richard 2 reference I missed earlier.
#shakespeare
