Colonial Williamsburg at Christmas: "Twelfth Night" Performance

We've attended several wonderful concerts in the Ballroom at the Governor's Palace, but we've never seen one of Shakespeare's plays performed there -- until now.  Although there's no record of any theatrical event taking place at the Governor's Palace in the 18th century, this adaptation of Shakespeare's "Twelfth Night" was our first opportunity to see Shakespeare performed in a colonial era setting with 18th century costumes.  I'm glad we went.

Although the play was performed ten times in December, we were unaware of its existence until about a week before we were scheduled to begin our trip.  Karen saw a Colonial Williamsburg blog post that offered two free tickets through a random drawing, and decided to enter.  To her surprise, she won!  The only problem was that we won tickets for a sold-out performance scheduled for the day BEFORE we planned to arrive in Virginia.  Fortunately, our schedule was flexible, so we were able to leave home a day earlier than planned, and made it to town a few hours before show time!

The performance was not a disappointment.  The actors were all very talented, and presented Shakespeare's 16th century language in a way that was relatively easy to follow.  The costumes were nicely executed, and the actors even made some references to the room in which the play was performed.  The fact that we got to visit with most of the cast after the show was simply icing on the cake.  In the photo above, Karen and I are in the middle surrounded by eight members of the cast, and Ralph and Dotty on the right, who also won tickets to the play.

The moral of the story: if you see a contest, enter it!  Especially if entering is free, and the prize is something fun you can't do every day!