03-08-2025
- Entertainment
- San Francisco Chronicle
See how Shakespeare got his mojo in S.F. Shakes' ‘Two Gentlemen of Verona'
Self-discovery on adventures to new lands. Cross-dressing in disguise to overhear the truth. Falling in love at first sight with such speed and totality as to banish all memory of your actual girlfriend. Pun-filled badinage.
Such motifs recur throughout Shakespeare's oeuvre. In the early play 'The Two Gentlemen of Verona,' now in a free, traveling San Francisco Shakespeare Festival production, audiences can get a sense of how 'Twelfth Night,' 'A Midsummer Night's Dream,' 'As You Like It' and more came to be.
In the show, performed in multiple Bay Area parks, Valentine (Tyler Aguallo) and Proteus (Brennan Pickman-Thoon) test their friendship when they both fall for Silvia (Emily Newsome). In true Shakespearean fashion, characters U-turn from one emotional extreme to another: 'Who should be trusted, when one's own right hand
is perjured to the bosom?' says Valentine to his pal, only to instantly forgive in the next line: 'Who by repentance is not satisfied is nor of heaven nor earth.'
Ely Sonny Orquiza directs, resetting the show in the Midwest and California.
"The Two Gentlemen of Verona": 6 p.m. Saturday-Sunday, Aug. 9-10. Through Aug. 24 at Red Morton Park, Vera Ave. at Valota Road, Redwood City. • Aug. 30-Sept. 7 at Jerry Garcia Amphitheater, McLaren Park, 40 John F Shelley Drive, S.F. • Sept. 13-21 at Sue Bierman Park, Washington St. at Drumm St., S.F. Free. 415-558-0888.
