One of my favorite letters of the year arrived this morning, from Heather Frederick. Allow me to quote:
”Dear Jane and Chris and the entire stellar cast of ‘Twelfth Night,’
I simply had to write to thank you for all your amazing, inspired, fabulous, and thoroughly enjoyable production of ‘Twelfth Night’. My 17-year-old son was home on Spring Break last week, and I thought it would be fun to take him to the theater. This was his first exposure to Shakespeare and I really wanted his maiden voyage to be a positive experience, so that he’d be hooked for life, as I was at his age. One always crosses one’s fingers when heading off to see the Bard (I can’t tell you the number of truly hideous hatchet-jobs I’ve seen in my life), but having recently attended ‘The Beard of Avon’ with my husband, I suspected you folks would do the material proud. As we arrived and took our seats, however, I have to admit that my heart sank. It was a Thursday matinee, and the theater was bristling with high school students. A field trip audience? I braced myself for trouble.
I needn’t have. From the hilarious opening scene with the ’ship’ of players to the final bow, you had us all in the palms of your talented hands. We hung on your every word - including the hipper-than-thou teens, no easy feat. We howled with laughter. We listened with collective joy to the rich cadences and beauty of Shakespeare’s language. It takes a rare kind of actor to make Elizabethan English as transparent as you all did, and my hat is off to each of you. Ultimately, the highest compliment I can offer are the words of praise that came from my son as we were leaving the theater: “Mom, that was awesome.”
Thank you all so much for your dedication to your craft, your obvious delight in your work, and your generosity of spirit in sharing your gifts with us. We can’t wait to come back for more!
All the best,
Heather Frederick”
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