After a hiatus last year, the nexStage Theatre presents the 10th annual Sun Valley Shakespeare Festival with Laughing Stock Theatre Co.'s "The Compleat Wrks of Wllm Shkspr (Abridged)" at the Ketchum theater. "A Midsummer Night's Dream" will be performed at Forest Service Park in Ketchum.
The "Bard tenders" have already strutted upon the stage and will continue their rendition of "The Compleat Wrks of Wllm Shkspr (Abridged)" today through Thursday, Aug. 19, and Sunday, Aug. 22 through Monday, Aug. 23.
Get ready for a year's worth of culture skillfully crammed into two hours, which will be artfully stuffed into theater patrons' heads by Steve D'Smith, Matt Gorby and William Hemmings, three local bartenders, who, in their spare time, are self-proclaimed Shakespeare aficionados. Tickets cost $15. Children 12 and under get in free.
"You'll laugh, you'll cry and you'll really wish you hadn't chosen to sit in the first three rows where you may have bodily fluids spewed upon you," Hemmings said jokingly.
Hemmings is a bartender at Whiskey Jacques' in Ketchum. He will be appearing in the show alongside Gorby and D'Smith, who bartend at The Casino in Ketchum.
"Compleat Works" is not just for Shakespeare lovers, but it is also for the hundreds who simply don't get what all the fuss is about. This hilarious parody of the plays of William Shakespeare was written by three American Shakespeare students, Adam Long, David Singer and Jess Winfield, and first performed at the Paramount Ranch in Agoura, Calif. It was then performed at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in 1987.
The play later transferred to the Criterion Theatre in London, where it ran for nine record-breaking years. It has become one of the world's most popular shows, playing frequently in a variety of languages. It is notable for holding the (self-proclaimed) world record for the shortest-ever performance of "Hamlet," clocking in at 43 seconds.
And, there's more.
"A Midsummer Night's Dream" endures as one of Shakespeare's most popular and accessible plays. A cast of local and visiting artists has been assembled to perform—as Shakespeare did—in the open air and without a fourth wall, but this version is in Ketchum's Forest Service Park.
Directed by Bruce Hostetler, the production features Equity actors Keith Moore, Patsy Wygle and Jamey Reynolds, backed by a group of talented young performers, including Harry Dreyfuss, Jacqueline King, Jeff Maxwell and Hollie Ann Hatch as the young lovers. In addition, Winkie McCray has once again created amazing and beautiful costumes to complete the experience.
"'A Midsummer Night's Dream' has a little bit of everything," said Hostetler. "It is wild and funny and serious and touching with great love stories and hilarious clowns."
The play will be performed at 6 p.m., Thursday, Aug. 19 through Sunday, Aug. 22, and Thursday, Aug. 26, through Sunday Aug. 29. Tickets are $20 each. Children 12 and under get in free.
"It's a classic fairy tale, characters going off into the woods, having an adventure and returning changed," Hostetler said. "Just like traditional European fairytales."
The Sun Valley Shakespeare Festival is sponsored in part by the Idaho Commission on the Arts and the National Endowment for the Arts. The nexStage Theatre is a member of the Wood River Arts Alliance.
For tickets to all events, call 726-4857.
Sabina Dana Plasse: splasse@mtexpress.com
From left, Matt Gorby, Steve D’Smith and Will Hemmings perform in “The Compleat Wrks of Wllm Shkspr (Abridged).” Photo by David N. Seelig
