One of the Utah Shakespearean Festival's busiest guest performers, Randy Moore, recently left the festival to co-star with Sally Field in a new television miniseries.
Moore's roles - Victor-Emmanuel Chandebise/Poche in "A Flea in Her Ear" and Simon Eyre in "The Shoemaker's Holiday" - have been taken over by Jon Farris, a professional actor who chairs the film/theater department at Denison University in Ohio."When Randy came to us we told him to take the role," said Fred C. Adams, festival founder and executive producer. "We didn't want to see him go, and he didn't want to go, but this is what actors live for. We didn't want to tell him he couldn't have this marvelous opportunity."
Moore will be appearing with Field in a made-for-TV adaptation of Elizabeth Haley's best-selling novel, "A Woman of Independent Means." It is being filmed in the Houston area and should be aired this winter.
During the 1993 USF season there was a similar cast change just a few weeks before the festival opened, when Patrick Page was invited to perform in the Broadway-bound production of the Pulitzer Prize-winning drama, "The Kentucky Cycle," and he was replaced by Harley Venton in "The Royal Family" and "Richard II."
Before arriving in Cedar City on July 30, Farris said: "It's a daunting task to pick up these two roles. I have never played either role. In fact I am one of the millions who have never even seen `The Shoemaker's Holiday.' "
Other USF productions this season include "As You Like It," "Richard III," "A Streetcar Named Desire" and "Love's Labour's Lost." For ticket information, call (801) 586-7878.