SF Shakespeare Festival 2007

I headed quickly back to San Mateo from the Arab Cultural Festival in order to arrive in time for the SF Shakespeare Festival's free performance of A Midsummer Night's Dream in San Mateo's Central Park. While in the city, as I walked to my car, I spotted Arizmendi bakery. Despite the name, it's the sister bakery of the Cheeseboard in Berkeley, a bakery I loved stopping by en route to early morning classes. I grabbed some items--no pizza, however--and headed home. Once home, I packed some supplies (blanket, jacket, utensils, etc.) and trotted over to the park, arriving five or ten minutes before the show was to begin. My arrival roughly coincided with the arrival of the friend I was meeting.

The performance was pretty good, though the costumes were, at times, odd. It felt like Shakespeare padded this play to make it long enough; the sub-plot with the actors performing for the duke seemed superfluous. I don't believe I've ever seen this play performed before. I may have read it in high school. Watching it made it more obvious what the slow and mostly irrelevant parts are.

While watching, we ate the Arizendi goodies. The focaccia with tomato and melted cheese was fairly good. The focaccia bread itself, however, wasn't very noticeable in this form. The raspberry scone was very good, in fact better than most scones I've had at the Cheeseboard. (I know scones are supposed to be dry but the Cheeseboard's scones tend to be drier than I like/think is appropriate.) The brioche was okay. I bought it because the Cheeseboard's brioches, when hot, tend to be a delightful combination of lightness, sweetness, and a bit of stickiness. This brioche wasn't hot and had become merely a medium density, slightly sweet bread product.

I'd grabbed a bottle of wine but forgot a corkscrew. Furthermore, I didn't see many other people drinking wine so I didn't put much energy into tracking down/borrowing one. Hence, we left it untouched.