William Shakespeare wrote, “What’s past is prologue,” and that’s certainly true of the legendary Adams Memorial Shakespearean Theatre. Thursday, Sept. 3, marked the first of three nights and three final performances—one comedy, one tragedy and one period piece—that the Utah Shakespeare Festival set aside to commemorate the closing of the 44-year-old performance space.
The final performance of “The Taming of the Shrew” on Thursday was sold out, and a cool breeze flitted through the open-air theatre as audience members found their seats in the Adams Shakespearean Theatre for the final performance of this Shakespearean comedy. The preceding Greenshow brimmed with theatregoers on that special night, and the air crackled with emotion and a bittersweet sense that mourned the loss of an old friend while also looking forward to a new “act.”
Before the show, executive director R. Scott Phillips addressed the audience.
“For 44 years, this lovely home has been the place where hundreds and hundreds of stories have been told by thousands of actors, and seen by hundreds of thousands of audiences,” Phillips said. “Tonight, we’re paying tribute to comedy: the laughter, the joy, the mirth and the merriment.”
Adams Shakespearean Theatre: From humble beginnings to international repute
Since the Adams Shakespearean Theatre’s opening night in 1971, the performance space has been a landmark not only for Cedar City citizens but also for Shakespeare enthusiasts everywhere. Modeled after Shakespeare’s Globe, the theatre is widely considered one of the most authentic Tudor-style performance spaces in the world. In fact, in 1981, the BBC and the Royal Shakespeare Company chose the space to film in the most authentic Elizabethan theatre they could find. At the time they proclaimed, “There’s not a theatre like this in England, Asia or Europe.”
Now change has come: For the Utah Shakespeare Festival’s 2016 season, a new performance space will take the place of the Adams Shakespearean Theatre. The Engelstad Shakespeare Theatre—part of the forthcoming Beverley Taylor Sorenson Center for the Arts—will usher in a new era of technology, safety and comfort at the Utah Shakespeare Festival.
“Our guests are taken care of in the new building,” founder Fred C. Adams said. “They’re comfortable, they’re safer, they’re more accommodated and our artists work in better conditions. Everything about it is a win-win, and we still have the wonderful ambiance and spacial relationship. So the new theatre is very similar; even though it has a modern outside, the inside is going to look very much like the old one.”
In keeping with that custom of upholding tradition, Adams directed “The Taming of the Shrew” this season, bringing his time at the Utah Shakespeare Festival full circle; during the festival’s first season in 1966, Adams directed the same play. After that first season, five years passed before the Adams Shakespearean Theatre opened its doors to the public.
Thursday night’s final performance of “The Taming of the Shrew” saw no shortage of mirth or merriment. Real-life wife and husband, Melinda Pfundstein and Brian Vaughn, expertly portrayed the romantic nuances of Katherine and Petruchio, and a profoundly appropriate Adams Shakespearean Theatre moment came just after intermission, when Petruchio insists his party and wife pray before their meal. He announces, “Will you give thanks, sweet Kate; or else shall I?” and all fall to their knees.
As Vaughn lifted his hands in prayer—and just as a moment of silence descended on the theatre—a car alarm blared through the rafters and over the boards. Every single actor on stage broke character and laughed or smiled; Pfundstein turned cherry red trying to hold in her laughter. The audience roared. That brief moment perfectly captured the imperfection that so personifies the charming Adams Shakespearean Theatre.
“Where else but the Adams Theatre are you going to have car alarms go off in the middle of a prayer?” Cedar City Mayor Maile Wilson joked after the play.
Adams Shakespearean Theatre final performance: Farewell to “this grand old edifice”
After the final performance of “The Taming of the Shrew,” Phillips and Adams held a short ceremony in which the actors from “The Taming of the Shrew” recited one line each from every comedy the Adams Shakespearean Theatre has hosted. The actors walked onstage, each holding a candle, and shared famous lines, including, “All the world’s a stage,” “If music be the food of love, play on,” and “What’s past is prologue.” Then they blew out their candles one by one.
“For the past 44 years,” Adams concluded, “this grand old edifice has contained the magic of mirth, dispensing fun and frivolity with significant doses of imagination and life. If we shadows have offended, think but this and all is mended. That you have but slumbered here while these visions did appear. This weak and idle theme was nothing more than a dream.”
