Walden Ladies and Shakespeare.

Here we are at our yearly book club retreat. Our club is called the Walden Ladies Book Club. There were only five of us who could make it this year, about a third of our membership. We stay at a condo in St George for a few days while we spoil ourselves with plays, both at the Tuacahn Theater in St George, and at the Shakespeare Festival in Cedar City,   Four of us are shown at the condo in the picture above. 

The first night we went to the Tuacahn. 

This is Suzanne and me, we saw Beauty and the Beast first. 

Here are Ann, Carolyn and Lillian. We saw Sister Act the second night. 

Here three of us join the Bard himself.

This is a cake model of the Globe Theater. 

Here three of the girls pose in front of the festival's version of the theater, between plays. 

Besides the two Tuacahn plays we also saw Charley's Aunt, a play that came out in 1892 and has been in production ever since. When it first appeared it broke all attendence records for plays of any kind in London. Oscar Wilder's play The Importance of Being Ernest came out in 1895, and has much the same feel to it.  I loved this play, and I'm amazed I've not seen it before. 

Dinner that night was at the Mongolian BBQ back in St George  Yum! 

Our last day we cleaned up the condo and headed to Cedar City. We had lunch at the Brick House, because Ann found it on a list of top sandwich shops in Utah. More yummy!! 

Our last play was The Taming of the Shrew.  The Festival had sold out evening performances for this week, and they added a matinee. Lucky for us. We adjusted our dates to see it! Petruchio was played by Brian Vaughn, a long time actor at the Festival, and now the artistic director. His wife, Melinda Pfunderstein, played Katherine, both are talented equity actors.  Maybe this contributed to the fact that the production was amazing!! 

So that was our quick book club trip to the festival. We're already making plans for next year!!