Cedar Breaks National Monument, Utah
We rolled into Cedar City, Utah, simply looking for a spot to overnight while exploring the surrounding desert landscape. What we found was a vibrant college town complete with Texas-topping barbeque and a production of Hamlet besting anything we experienced in twenty years of Manhattan Shakespeare productions. Pretty impressive for a city of just 29,000.
Located in the southwestern corner of Utah, Cedar City is sometimes called the Gateway to the Parks. From here you can reach Zion, Bryce, Great Basin, Capitol Reef, Grand Staircase-Escalante, Lake Powell and even the Grand Canyon all within a several hour scenic drive. But our purpose for coming was to visit Cedar Breaks National Monument, just 22 miles from the city’s center.
Fatty’s food truck served up BBQ rivaling the best we had anywhere in the Lone Star State
Relatively small by national park standards with just four designated hiking trails and a couple of turnouts on a six-mile scenic drive, Cedar Breaks still packs a powerful punch. From atop a cliff’s ledge 10,000 feet above sea level we gazed across seemingly endless miles of multicolored spires covering the floor of a natural desert amphitheater 2,500 feet deep. We’ve made a note to return in July when abundant wildflowers cover, and enhance, this already stunning scenery.
During our stay we discovered that national parks aren’t the only reason people come to Cedar City. It’s true that the town often serves as a gateway to other places, but it prides itself mostly on what people do within city limits: which is party – so to speak. With at least 16 large gatherings and celebrations in 2012 alone Cedar City has truly earned its reputation as Festival City.
Cedar Breaks Hoodoos
Whether you enjoy traveling on foot or on mountain bikes; fast cars or indie films; bucking broncos or Renaissance fairs, Cedar City has a festival for you. For us, it was their Emmy Award-winning Utah Shakespeare Festival. From two different venues, one a beautifully modern theater once featured in Architecture Magazine and a second designed similar to London’s Globe Theatre where Shakespeare’s plays were originally produced, the Festival runs several different performances each year from June through October.
We’ve been attending Shakespeare productions for at least the past two decades, mostly at Manhattan’s Shakespeare in the Park, a venue that often draws big-name casts. We’ve seen Meryl Streep, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Patrick Stewart, Liev Schreiber, Ian McKellen, and others in various roles over the years. And yet I can’t remember a better production or performance than the one we watched in Cedar City.
Utah’s Adams’s Shakespeare Theater (Right) is designed similar to London’s Globe Theater (Left) only without the Globe’s more authentic “peasant pit.”
That the Utah Shakespeare Festival won me over was no small feat. I admit to starting the night with a bit of a bad attitude. We arrived in town during the production of Hamlet which, despite its critical acclaim and litany of clichéd quotes (“Brevity is the soul of wit,” “To thine own self be true,” “Though this be madness, yet there is method in it,” “Conscience doth make cowards of us all,” “The lady doth protest too much,” “Goodnight sweet prince,” “Neither a borrower nor a lender be,” “Something is rotten in the state of Denmark” . . . ), it is not my favorite play.
I prefer my tragic protagonists to be made of sterner stuff than the vacillating Hamlet whose signature soliloquy “to be, or not to be” contemplates the merits of suicide. I simply have trouble empathizing with a lead character who is uncertain whether his own death is preferable to facing down his murderous stepfather. Swap Macbeth for Hamlet and we’d witness the villainous Claudius “unseamed from nape to nave” before the close of the first act; making for a far shorter and, in my opinion, far better play.
But who am I to question The Bard? And so I went.
Juliet
The first sign of good news was the absence from this production of the period costumes and cod pieces so often associated with Shakespeare. Good riddance. This isn’t the first production to place Shakespearian characters in a more modern setting, but such directorial decisions are almost always an improvement.
More importantly, the director and actor somehow masterfully threaded a difficult needle with the title character. Too often Hamlet is cast as either a whimpering weakling wrestling with the unfairness of his “outrageous fortune” or a basket-case completely unwound by the same forces. Neither character, nor any of the variations in between, are ever ones I’m happy to spend three hours with. Director Marco Barricelli, meanwhile, offered us a Hamlet that is stronger and less brooding, more fed-up than melancholy, a bit unbalanced but not completely unhinged. Unlike any Hamlet I’ve seen, this version was not only powerful but engaging enough to keep the audience interested for the duration of the play. Incredibly well done.
If this one production is any guide to the quality the Utah Shakespeare Festival offers generally, we’d say save New York for big-name stargazing and head to Cedar City for out-out-of-this-world performances. Spend the day, as we did, exploring natures’ wonders in our fabulous national parks, but for a real treat take Hamlet at his word: the play is most definitely the thing.
Everywhere Once 
Thanks for sharing your stunning journey and for visiting my little corner of the world.
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Great entry. But Texas Topping BBQ? ….. gonna have to check that one out for sure. 🙂
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It’s more pervasive than you might think – at least in our experience sampling the country’s ‘que.
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I went to Titus Andronicus earlier this year and thoroughly enjoyed it! The characters were engaging, strong, and it was tastefully done.
I enjoyed Les Miserables there as well.
I absolutely love Cedar Breaks NM, as well and have been there many times. I currently call Zion NP home, and always have. Thanks for sharing your experiences about the Shakespeare Festival and the area.
I attended SUU and went to many student productions, such as “Anne of Green Gables”, “A Man for All Seasons”, “South Pacific”, and many others and they rivaled anything I saw on Broadway.
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Awesome scenery. That first pic looks like Nature’s Amphitheater. Utah is on our list of places to visit next summer on our way to Alaska. Thanks for wetting our appetite.
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Utah is pretty amazing. You’re going to have a great time.
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thanks for visiting my blog! 🙂 those canyons are gorgeous!
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I love Shakespeare Festivals. In addition to places you’d expect, they are also held in places you’d almost never think of, like Montgomery, Alabama. Where there is a lovely Shakespeare in the park event at where else, Shakespeare Park. We’ve also attended the Sakespeare “series” in High Point, North Carolina. Performed by community theater actors; educational, funny…Taming Of The Shrew was hilarious when a prop came flying out into the audience. (accidentally of course.
Amazing photos as always. Enjoyed this post!!
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Yup, we visited the Shakespeare Festival in Montgomery too. Quite a venue they have there – a massively solid brick building that serves as a storm shelter. Which was a good thing because the night we saw a play Montgomery was under a pretty significant tornado warning. Titled that post Shelter from the Storm.
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Nice. I used to live not far from there. Took my dog walking in that massive park all the time. The year before we left was when hurricane Dennis hit Florida. We got heavy rains for days and serious flooding. Storms are serious business in that area.
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What a view!
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This is excellent! I was at a production of Hamlet in the US last night – the players from Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre are currently on tour in Los Angeles – but this sounds even better! Brilliant view too…
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Hi! Since your blog is a great source of inspiration for me I nominated you for the Very Inspiring Blogger Award, you can read the post and the rules for accepting it here http://autumninbruges.wordpress.com/2012/11/21/news/. Of course, you’re not obliged to do anything!! Congratulations for the award!
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Oh, I love Utah so much. One of my favorite places in the States, and possibly one of my top spots period (geographically and scenically, anyway). Thanks for bringing me back!
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Pictures are beautiful. I hope to make it there soon. My husband’s been before, so it may take a little while to get there.
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