Shakespeare in the Park

I saw a live version of The Tempest tonight at Louisville's Shakespeare Festival.  They have an outdoor theater in a large park in the center of town (I think it is, in fact, called Central Park) where they have nightly performances of Shakespeare during the summer. 

I've never seen The Tempest live, although I have always liked it, always loved Prospero even though there is some sort of shady business going on with him according to some critics.  There is so much focus on that play now with a colonialist eye.  Caliban, Ariel, they become something modern, something different.  It's fascinating, in a way to study it that way, to talk about it that way.  I think it's important to rethink familiar and comfortable pieces of literature.  It doesn't mean we have to abandon the way we've always related to them, but it can mean another layer of richness, perhaps.

On a completely girlish and silly note, and having absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with criticism of any kind, if I have a daughter ever, one of the things I may name her in my overly English geekish way is Miranda. She and Ophelia are my two favorite Shakespeare women, and I don't know about naming my daughter after Ophelia.  I think that might be tempting fate a bit much.

In any case, and all hypothetical daughters aside, there is something about that play, one of Shakespeare's last, and the things he says in it that move me.  Maybe it's the magic.  Maybe it's Ariel.  Maybe it's the "now our revels all are ended" speech which I can see an aging master coming forward on the stage to say, staring around him at the crowds filling the theater.  I don't know.  It's powerful.

Tonight as a whole was a great experience.  It was outdoors in a lovely place, always a bonus when you've been cooped up in a large artificially lit and cooled space for many a day.  There were lightning bugs everywhere, and I kept thinking about how you just could not have asked for a better special effect in a play about magic than they were.  Of course, there were kids darting around in the damp grass trying to capture the lightning bugs, too, but that was just right as well.

I wish I had something like this closer to home.  I guess I will just settle for indulgences when I travel, sort of like a favorite treat you only get on vacation.  I just wish it didn't have to be that way.