Capt. Mondo's World o' Mondo-ness

Shakespeare at Kew Beach Park
After work we had a quick dinner and with tarpaulin and jackets for the kids in hand, took everybody down to Kew Beach Park for an evening performance of "the Scottish play" at the bandshell.

Macbeth in the Beaches – panorama

The impetus for us was the fact that Erika and Dave from across the street were to play a fanfare on their trumpets (written by their mutual trumprt music tutor Stanley R.) announcing the start of the show, and backstage for appearances of the king. They had also made a recording of the fanfare for use during the show's subsequent performances Saturday and Sunday afternoons, but I think they just wanted to play the piece live in front of an audience at least once.

It ended up being a pleasant evening for a show, though chill by its conclusion. I figured the kids wouldn't be able to put up for show for long, and thankfully the playground was adjacent. And while we did head there once, Vanessa in particular wanted to stay and see the play through, which we ended up doing. The kids did get restless, and basically they had long bouts of watching the show, and then heading to the back of the park and playing touch-tag with a friend for a bit, and then back to the show.

The performance of Macbeth itself was fun, if largely unremarkable. But hey, it was an amateur production that was well done given its small scale. The consensus of the adults who hung out on the tarpaulin was that the leads were only okay, but that a few of those who had bit parts stood out, presumably because they had more time to concentrate on their delivery of fewer lines. Attendance was relatively sparse, likely due to a brief rain shower at dinner time, and the fact that the show had next to no advertising, other than a mention in the local paper the previous week.

The show was enjoyable and is definitely the sort of thing I would help support should they want to make it an annual thing.