When we were in Nevada a few weeks ago, we spent an afternoon and evening at Sand Harbor on Lake Tahoe. It was hot outside, and refreshingly (if initially shockingly) cold in the lake. The water is very clear, although there wasn’t a whole lot to see — near the beach, at least. It was pleasant to go for a swim in a large body of water, dry out on the sandy beach, and realize that I wasn’t covered in either salt or lake sludge.
After we’d had our fill of the beach, we cleaned up and walked over to the Lake Tahoe Shakespeare Festival’s outdoor stage, which has the lake for a backdrop. My mom had gotten us tickets to that evening’s production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream. After finding our seats, we sat down to a delicious picnic assembled by the various members of our group. The food was tasty, the venue was gorgeous, and the play was… weird. Most of the Athenians were rich yacht club types (a good fit for many of Tahoe’s summer residents), while the rebellious Hermia and Lysander were goths. The faeries were mostly pseudo native American, except for the token black guy wearing a loincloth and carrying a spear. The mechanicals were a variety of blue-collar workers, with Nick Bottom as a guitar-wielding hot dog vendor.
To these disparate (and never satisfactorily explained) groups was added a bizarre mishmash of music. Nick Bottom came out to The Boss’s “Born in the USA.” The various songs within the play were sung in rock-ish settings with instruments played by members of the company. Throughout the play, a new-age Navajo — who was often on stage — played so-called “Native American flute.” Perhaps the weirdest thing came at the end. During Puck’s soliloquy (“If we shadows have offended…”) the flutist played and another Indian conducting a smudging ceremony on stage. The whole thing was a hodgepodge of different and largely unconnected directorial directions. But, at least we had plenty to talk about on the ride back down to Carson City.
