“Ah.” The glorious cup of ramen noodles sat steaming on the bench where I was sitting. The smell of the ramen noodles on a cold afternoon while waiting for the play to start was truly an enticing experience. Recently, my Shakespeare book club and I drove to San Pedro’s Shakespeare by the Sea to observe the play, Cymbeline, after weeks of hard work deciphering the difficult but unique language of the Elizabethan era. We had a great time in class studying William Shakespeare’s creative imagination.

Each theatre’s interpretation of Cymbeline is different in its own way, but I enjoyed this one the best. Shakespeare by the Sea has always been able to capture the attention of their audience in many ways whether it’s humor, tragedy, or just happiness. Their version seemed to have taken all these characteristics in mind to create this play. All the actors showed the audience the effort they put into that performance so that we would be able to enjoy it. This version was especially interesting because of how they put it together. For example, in Cymbeline, the characters, Cadwal and Polydore are introduced in the beginning as the original sons of King Cymbeline with their real names, Arviragus and Guiderius. As the story unfolds, we, as the audience already have some knowledge about the identity of these characters.

While there were many great qualities of this presentation, there were also some changes they could have made. While one of their main mistakes was a humorous one, there was a change that needed to be made about it. Cloten, one of the main characters in the play, is the son of the new queen of Britain. The queen, being selfish, wanted her son Cloten to marry the king’s only daughter, Imogen.

When Cloten is killed later on in the play, he is still left on the stage for the audience to clearly see that the actor is not trying his best to pretend being dead. While I do understand that the actor cannot simply hold his breath until the end of the scene, he was making it too obvious with the constant uprising of his chest showing that he is still breathing. This experience was truly an amazing one and I hope for more amazing performances from the Shakespeare by the Sea organization.

<Alison Moon, Palms Middle School 7th Grade>