Utah Shakespearean Festival season opens with Hitchcock, Dickens and the Bard

Prithee, willest thou pass the Coppertone SPF 80 (with aloe), my lord?

Thankest thee, dude.

Yes, Billy S. is back for his annual summer R&R.

"I knew when I picked these six plays that they were large plays, the kind our audience would respond to," says R. Scott Phillips, executive director of the Utah Shakespearean Festival in Cedar City, which opens its yearly Bard bazaar on Monday for its summer season through Sept. 4. (The fall presentations will run Sept. 16-Oct. 23.)

On the Shakespearean side, those plays are Bard stalwarts "Macbeth" (that's the fellow beset by witches' prophecies and his morals-challenged missus), "The Merchant of Venice" (the controversial-to-this-day play featuring hotly debated money-lender Shylock) and "Much Ado About Nothing" (lovers and fairies frolic everywhere).

As for the non-thee/thy/thou entries, there's "Alfred Hitchcock's The 39 Steps" (Hitchcock Meets Monty Python, as murder, betrayal and espionage are given a comic spin), "Pride and Prejudice" (two parents, five daughters, a couple of eligible bachelors and complications galore) and the world premiere musical "Great Expectations" (see accompanying story about the tuneful adventures of Pip, child orphan and aspiring gentleman).

Back as usual are features such as the pre-performance Greenshows, brimming with songs, dancing, storytelling and juggling in Elizabethan garb; plus backstage tours, play orientations, literary and production seminars and luncheons with actors. Parents can drop the kids at child-care facilities.

"Most of our sister theaters across the country have taken a hit, and so have we," says longtime festival actor Brian Vaughn, who was named co-artistic director in May, along with David Ivers, and will perform in "The 39 Steps" and "Pride and Prejudice."

"But I believe our artistic aesthetic has gotten better. We haven't been acting as if we're in a deficit."

Pared down over recent years, the festival budget this season is $6 million, with ticket prices ranging from $21 to $68, adding a couple of dollars on both low and high ends from last year's $19-$65, reducing some middle-range prices.

"For the first time in a couple of years, ticket sales are ahead of where they had been, and we are finding that the high-end tickets are selling very strong," Phillips says. "The lower and medium (priced tickets) have struggled, so we lowered them trying to help the middle-income guy who still wants leisure entertainment. People are still coming, but where in the past they'd see four shows, now maybe three is all they can afford."

Recessionary factors also forced some trimming around the artistic edges. "It did reduce some ability to hire actors, and we made most of our reductions in personnel -- maybe one less prop artist, two less costume designers across the board," Phillips says, adding that he doesn't think the cuts impact the final productions onstage, but do alter the process of getting them there.

"In talking to a costume designer, what was hard is that normally, at the first dress rehearsal of shows, we'd have all the costumes ready, but now they won't be ready, so the director can't see it in its totality."

Selecting among the 37 Shakespeare plays comprising the festival's rotation year to year, Phillips noted that staging "The Merchant of Venice," while a staple of the Bard's canon, is still a dice roll because of the harsh depiction of the Jewish Shylock -- though a significant non-Jewish portion of the festival's patrons appreciate it with a sense of empathy.

"Some of my peers won't touch it," Phillips says. "But for the LDS (Latter-day Saints) audience, they come to see it in droves and they can identify with it, they feel they've been persecuted as well. Twice before when we did it, some people walked out because they became angry when Shylock was spit upon."

On the cuter end of the anecdotal spectrum, married actors Carol Linnea Johnson and Don Burroughs ("Mamma Mia!") are expanding from a theatrical couple to a theatrical family: Five-year-old daughter Linnea -- who grew up around the theater scene and even celebrated her first birthday backstage at Broadway's Winter Garden Theatre during the "Mamma Mia!" run -- is joining her father in "Macbeth."

"After an offer came, the only role I could think of for a child was one of the children in 'Macbeth,' and I thought, 'Don't they end up murdered?' " Carol Johnson recalls. "But I knew she wanted to do it, so I talked to her about it. I explained to her that 'Macbeth' is one of those stories where you learn what not to do. She said, 'Do I get to scream and die onstage?' I said, 'Yeah.' She was in."

Should the youngster expire convincingly onstage, who knows what's next?

Maybe "Medea."

Contact reporter Steve Bornfeld at sbornfeld@ reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0256.