Kiss Me, Kate

One of the great things about having house guests is that they usually come equipped with a nice new car and driver -- and I get introduced to interesting new faces of Prescott.

Turns out that the Memphis niece's 14-year-old daughter (below) is sufficient of an egghead that when she got wind there were Shakespearean plays on stage at the Ruth Street Theater (the auditorium of the local high school), we had to go. Not only The Taming of the Shrew last night, but she and her mother are off to Julius Caesar tonight.

Her verdict on the comedy -- the best production she's seen yet. She's happy to wear the troupe's official T-shirt with the WGSC (World's Greatest Shakespeare Company) logo we bought last night and she's already petitioning her Mom to come back for next year's Shakespeare in Arizona festival!

Apropos being an "egghead", she insists that any "theater people" of any age, such as herself, would want to see productions of Elizabethan drama/comedy.

I discovered that my little Sony digital camera, which is glared out by the Arizona sun, did just fine at capturing the goings on on stage.

Which goings on were an adaptation of the classic comedy to an early Western setting in, of course, Prescott. Well done, too, with Kate a roping, gun slinging, wrestling shrew ... broad comic sideshows in the background, including a grizzled miner and his donkey ... and a show played for laughs, as the Bard intended!

The run of the two plays continues tomorrow (Sunday) and next weekend (Friday/Saturday/ Sunday). Go!

Later: mom & daughter returned with rave reviews of the Caesar (set in the late 30s), most of the actors, the sets and the costuming. And I forgot to mention that for 30 minutes prior to the big production, the actual WGSC improv group performs. Not to forget the improv's Death by Shakespeare motif!