If Fred Adams, founder and executive producer of the Utah Shakespearean Festival in Cedar City, is exceptionally happy these days it's because the festival got a nifty gift for its 35th anniversary.
As part of Gov. Mike Leavitt's 1996 budget appropriations, the festival has been allocated $1.1 million to complete the acquisition of property for the projected Utah Shakespearean Center for the Performing Arts.I'm sure there will be those who are pooh-poohing the funding, clucking about how Cedar City is Gov. Leavitt's hometown.
But there's no denying that the festival has become a major destination for theatergoers throughout the region. It's a clean, non-polluting industry that has really put Cedar City "on the map."
Under Adams' nurturing, the festival has reached the point where it has an outstanding reputation not only in professional theater circles, but also among those who just enjoy an evening (or several) of exciting theater.
This expenditure was right on target, but long overdue.
- UTAH PLAYWRIGHT Russell Lees' highly praised off-Broadway production, "Nixon's Nixon," which premiered last October in a limited engagement at the MCC Theater in New York Cityk, has moved and reopened at the Westside Theater Downstairs at 407 W. 43rd St.
It's set in the White House on the eve of President Nixon's resignation and depicts a fictional version of a secret meeting that is known to have taken place between the disgraced president and Secretary of State Henry Kissinger.
If you're headed back to New York any time soon, call (212) 307-4100 for ticket information.
(I'm hoping that with Lees' strong Utah ties, maybe the play will be staged here sometime. My guess - and it's only that - would be TheatreWorks West, since Lees has worked with both them and Westminster College, where the company is in residence.)
- ONE (MORE) FOR THE ROAD - Another Utah performer, Holly Jo Cushing Crane of Murray, has been called to join the cast of the national touring company of "Les Miserables," which is currently playing at the National Theatre in Washington, D.C.
Holly Jo, daughter of Roger and Joyce Cushing of Bountiful, is married to Ryan Crane, a mechanical engineering student at the University of Utah.
While most of her performance work has involved entertainment events and weddings, Crane did some theatrical productions in high school and was in the ensemble of "Evita" when Pioneer Theatre Company staged it a couple of years back.
Her husband noticed the "Les Miz" audition anouncement in the newspaper last fall, so she took a chance. That was in August. Nothing much happened in the meantime, but a few weeks ago the producers called and invited her to another audition in New York.
There are nearly half a dozen cast members in the company with Utah connections, including Kurk Davidson, who is understudy for Jean Valjean; Jenell Slack, a youngster with Hale Center Theater credits, playing Little Cosette; Robynn Thompson-Scribner and D.B. Bonds (who is from the East Coast but who had been playng in the Utah Musical Theatre production of "Forever Plaid" in Ogden when he auditioned), and Chriseena Riggs, another former BYU student.