UGH! Hudson Valley Shakespeare Festival CANCELLED!

UGH! Hudson Valley Shakespeare Festival CANCELLED! It is with great sadness that we report today’s announcement that the 2020 Hudson Valley Shakespeare Festival at Boscobel House & Gardens in Garrison, NY was cancelled today. Artistic Director Davis McCallum and Managing Director Kate Liberman made the announcement at noon. The Festival has established a reputation for lucid, engaging, and highly inventive productions staged under an iconic, open-air Theater Tent overlooking the Hudson River and the Hudson Highlands.

HVSF is on a very short list of our favorite things to do in our area and it has occupied a very prominent position on our Bucket List since 2016. In fact it was that very same year that The New York Times named the festival to its list of 50 Essential Summer Festivals. The list, by the way includes Bonnaroo, Lollapalooza, the Newport Jazz Festival, Lincoln Center’s Mostly Mozart, Charleston’s Spoleto Festival, California’s Ojai Festival, Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival in Beckett, MA and the Grand Teton Music Festival set at the foot of the Grand Tetons – to name a few.

It’s grab ass time at Boscobel as the Hudson Valley Shakespeare takes the stage.

HVSF – the antidote to Bard-o-phobia

Have you ever felt that you would really like Shakespeare plays if only they weren’t staged in a foreign language? We famously wrote this line in 2016, because we too suffer from Bard-o-phobia. (Methinks that’s what it is.) But HVSF cured us of that. They deliver Shakespeare in broad strokes with every gesture larger than life and every word smashed to its roots – as one would imagine it in the old Globe Theatre in 1599..

In fact, before we learned of their critical acclaim (their 2015 production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream was nominated for a Drama League Award for Outstanding Revival of a Broadway or Off-Broadway Play) we thought they were like Shakespeare for (Suburban) Dummies. But they are not pandering. They just deliver Shakespeare with a praiseworthy economy of style, clarity and invention – without pretensions  And, because we are culture-vultures of the lowest and most rogue order, we especially adore their bawdy takes on Shakespeare’s comedies. If you’re still not sold, each summer they perform one non-Shakespeare play. Last summer we had the great privilege of seeing their first-ever fully staged musical, Sondheim’s Into the Woods. A night we’ll never forget.

Picnic time at HVSF

Or maybe it’s just the Sauvignon Blanc

“Few directors have been blessed with a stage like that overseen by Terrence O’Brien, …” wrote The New York Times’ Ben Brantley of HVSF’s Founding Artistic Director. Set against the backdrop of the Hudson Highlands, the hills of Boscobel bleed onto the stage that is just a dirt floor under a tent with theater seating. And the directors use the grounds to great effect. Grand entrances with actors slowly rising from the hillside below are one of their signature devices.

This grand setting draws crowds of picnickers before the show. It is unimaginable to us to attend a production without packing a picnic dinner and a cold bottle of Sauvignon Blanc. It is de rigueur to get there by six to enjoy some finger food and our favorite quaff on Boscobel’s lawn overlooking the Hudson River. Maybe it’s not HVSF that cures Bard-o-phobia. Maybe the Sauvi-Blanc slows everything down and helps you soak in the Bard’s prose and verse – right down to every iamb and troche. Who knows? It works for us.

A sad blow for theatre buffs – a big $$$ hit for the Hudson Valley

It is not a small thing for Garrison, NY to cancel to have the HVSF season cancelled. The festival regularly draws over 35,000 attendees each summer. It is a major economic engine for the Hudson Valley, generating an estimated $7.5 million economic impact in the region. It employs over 150 people seasonally. And collaborates with more than 30 local vendors, and brings more than 50 visiting artists and staff to stay in the Hudson Valley from May-September.

But “the deed is done”, though we hope that the doers are not. “As much as we wish it were otherwise, in the end we had to face the fact that canceling the season was our only option.” explained Davis McCallum. “We are hugely disappointed not to be able to gather under the tent this summer, but the health and wellbeing of our artists, our audiences, and our community must come first.”

“We are aware of the profound impact that a summer without performances will have not just on artists and staff members at HVSF, but on the entire surrounding community and local businesses,” adds Kate Liberman. “We would not take this step if we had any alternative, and we look forward to finding new ways to engage and support our community in the coming months.”

Cancellation FAQs

See you next year…

If you have already purchases tickets for this summer’s festival you may convert the cost of your tickets to a fully tax-deductible donation to HVSF. If you’d rather, you can convert the value of your tickets to credit towards HVSF’s 2021 Season, to be used on tickets, merch, or concessions. Or you can request a full or partial refund. Ticket holders will receive an email in the days ahead with a link to choose amongst the three options above. If your account does not have an email address associated with it, you will receive a call from their box office in May. If you have further questions, you can reach out to Scotty Arnold, Manager of Sales and Membership, via email boxoffice@hvshakespeare.org.