Alcohol+Shakespeare in the park=Fun

I realize that I haven’t posted in quite a while and I’m sorry. I know that there are plays going on that I haven’t seen and theatre companies in this town that I have yet to slam on this blog but for the last few months (oh dear, has it been months???) I just couldn’t bring myself to watch any more bad theatre.  All the awful, awful productions the bad acting, anachronistic sets, props and costumes just bring me down, you know?

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Oh, who am I kidding?  I LOVE it.  I’m just lazy.  And busy.  I’d like to think that I have a life outside of  hating on community theatre.  But this is not the place for excuses.  You want me to write nasty things about Sacramento theatre, right?  Well, put on your helmets and strap yourselves in, the SACRAMENTO SHAKESPEARE FESTIVAL is about to open.  In two days, in fact.  I have to say, this is the highlight of my theatre-going year.  It probably has to do with the fact that you can bring booze into the park.  ANYTHING is tolerable with a sufficient amount of alcohol.  (Snow White for example…) Of course, since it’s brought to you by City Theatre they should call it the Sacramento Festival-of-mediocre-student-Shakespeare but I am prepared to take my picnic and my bottle(s) 0f wine and sit in the front on the grass (with the bugs) and enjoy the hell out of myself.

This year they are producing William Shakespeare’s much-beloved Much Ado About Nothing (opening this Friday) and Robin Hood.    Uh,…wha?  Okay, I’m not a Shakespeare scholar or anything but I’m reasonably secure in the knowledge that he never wrote a play about Robin Hood.  WTF???  HOW can you call it a Shakespeare Festival when one of the TWO plays you are doing are NOT by Shakespeare?  Maybe it’s like a greatest-hits of bits of Shakespeare cobbled together under the main plot of Robin Hood.  Yeah, so Robin is having an existential crisis about the fact that the Sheriff of Nottingham is being oppressive and evil and he breaks out in “Oh! That this too too solid flesh would melt…” I think that’s too much to hope for.  It’s probably going to be awful.  The best we can hope for here is a couple of slooooooooow fight scenes.  Anyway that show opens the following week and I am looking forward to the train wreck with a bottle in hand.