Utah Shakespeare Festival — Attraction in Cedar City

I have been coming to the festival for around five years. This season features the best Macbeth I have seen (and the second best Shakespeare show I've ever seen). The theatre is very professional in most areas, extremely enjoyable, and I will return. This makes it all the sadder to spend most of this review on their single fault.

The house staff fail to meet professional standard specifically around handling walkers and other mobility devices. Not one year have I seen a consistent enforcement of policies around walkers in the main outdoor theatre. Some house staff will take your walker and others will not. On Thursday the staff did not say anything about removing walkers from those using them. On Friday a worker removed the walker and has no good answer to why it was being removed this night but not the other. Instead he insulted the work of the previous nights staff. I spoke to the house supervisor about how this lack of consistency has been the one frustration to our many happy visits and that the staff clearly lacked training on how to have a respectful discussion. I initially planned to leave it at this, but alas

On Saturday night I attended the green show on the lawn and witnessed more inappropriate behavior from staff around walkers and disability. All of the seats were full so a woman with a limp has moved a chair down two flights of stairs to sit in while she watched the show. It took her a bit and she was clearly struggling to sit and stand. A staff member approached her mid show and took her chair away and back up the stairs, reseating her on a crowded bench. The same attendant then tried to move another man's walker. The man told him no multiple times but he was so insistent, despite the man citing other staff not remembering to return the walker as promised, the man eventually had to raise his voice and speak quite firmly to get him to leave. The walker was tucked between two benches, completely out of the walkway. I fail to see the need for staff to intervene in what is a very open space.I fail to see why staff cannot wait 15 minutes to move a chair, assuming the women wouldn't have replaced it herself. Both of these instances also distracted from the main show.

It is imperative the theatre has a clear policy on mobility devices that is applied consistently night to night. It is imperative that staff are trained on how to have a respectful discussion while enforcing these policies. If the concern is fire safety then the festival has been out of code for several years and is failing its audience by not keeping them safe. If the concern is for actor safety then the festival has failed them. If the reason is not related to safety the festival has failed their disabled patrons by removing mobility aids for no...

Utah Shakes is always a fantastic experience. But this year do not miss Othello or Big River. Brian Vaughn as Iago was absolutely stunning. I've never seen him give anything other than good performances, but this one was electric. Ezekiel Andrew as Jim and Rob Riordan as Huck led an amazing production of Big River. We saw this show in July and returned to Cedar yesterday to see it again. I love this show and have seen a couple of adequate professional productions previously. They were nothing compared to this version. If you can listen to these two do Muddy Water and not think its one of the best performances you've ever seen in any venue including Broadway and the West End, you're deaf or dead. The singing and choreography throughout were exceptional. All supporting roles were up to the quality of the leads. The only minor critique I could possibly offer would be for Pap to be a might angrier during Guv'ment. Otherwise it was as close to flawless as I think could be done. Net, I'd rather have the soundtrack to this performance than the Broadway cast album I...

My girlfriends and I have been coming to the Cedar City Shakespeare Festival for many years. The plays are professionally done and of consistently high caliber. They offer 3-4 Shakespeare plays each season, along with 2-3 modern plays or a musical. They usually offer something historical, a tragedy, and some comedies, so that there is something for every taste. Of course if you are a die hard live theater fan you can watch two performances a day and see everything in 3.5 days. There are free orientations before performances, actors seminars in the morning (discussing last nights performances) as well as as free costume and prop seminars during the late morning, that explain how props and costumes are designed, chosen and built. Each night, before the evening performance, there is a free "green show", a 30 min show of song and folk dance. The new theatre is well designed. The grounds are beautiful and promise to become even better in the future, as trees mature and promise to provide much...