Spoleto a different world from week to week

There is quite a difference between opening weekend of the Spoleto Festival in Charleston and the second, or middle, weekend.
For decades now, we have gone to Spoleto on opening weekend, but this year we could not make it and had to reschedule our festival fling for the second weekend.
For one thing, it seemed that it was not nearly as crowded. Parking at our Meeting Street motel was more available than we are accustomed to finding. Still there were license tags from 18 states at our motel.
Also, the audiences seem to be much more fancily dressed for opening weekend events. The first weekend, there are many tuxedoes and fancy gowns at events like the opening night opera and other things at Gaillard Municipal Auditorium. We found audiences more casually dressed the second weekend.
We wondered how much, if at all, the sagging economy might have affected attendance. It did seem to me that the houses at our events had ample audiences.
One thing about second weekend is the absence of the Seed and Feed Marching Abominable. I found my self looking for them occasionally, but then remembered that they come for the first couple of days of the festival, so they had been there the previous Saturday and Sunday.
The Abominable is a marching band group from Atlanta that looks awful with horribly mismatched, inappropriate “uniforms,” marches very badly, but really makes good music. They startle people around the old town with their appearance and sometimes resemble the Pied Piper as fascinated people follow them along their route. We missed them.
Dozens of artists congregate on Marion Square during the festival, offering work for sale in little tents around what once was the parade ground of The Citadel before they long ago anticipated urban sprawl and moved their campus away from downtown.
Among them were Richard Johnson and Jane Jackson, Florence artists who set up at Spoleto each year with art that some of the visitors take home with them. It gives us a spot to visit each festival, and they seemed to be doing very well despite the economy.
At Marion Square, I marveled at the John C. Calhoun statue that stands atop a tall column on the edge of the park. He faces southward, and some people interpret that as turning his back on the North, which Calhoun gladly would have done. But it also strikes me that, looking at it from the north side, the way his cloak flares out on each side, it looks a little like he is flashing the city.
We caught the big opera at Gaillard, little known Gustave Charpentier’s “Louise,” a tale about a young Paris girl who gets restless under parents who treat her like a child and eventually plunges big time into the wicked Parisian party scene. Although it was a big disappointment for her parents, it did seem that she was having a good time.
Critics are pretty cool to “Louise,” but I liked it, and particularly liked Ukrainian soprano Stefania Dovhan who played Louise.
Then there was “Don John,” a play with music, inspired by “Don Juan” and “Don Giovanni.” The title character is a guy with a preternatural attraction to and for women. It was staged in the renovated Memminger Auditorium, a former school gymnasium where Spoleto theater is being done while Dock Street Theater undergoes a big renovation.
Don John is a bit of a heel who finally gets what’s coming to him. The ample sex in the play, of course, is simulated, which is a good thing because I don’t see how the actor could have survived one performance, let alone the entire run, had it not been.
Cedar Lake Contemporary Ballet was a big crowd pleaser another night at Gaillard. It was very fast-paced and physical. The first piece, “Sunday, Again,” dealt with strains in relationships when people might like a little less togetherness on days of rest and was probably the audience favorite.
There was a sort of Florence Caucus on Sunday when we got together with Dr. Sidney and Faye Griffin of Lamar, Gerald and Darby Holley, Charles and Glenda Dubose and Charles and Claudia Calcutt. Many stories were told, some accurate.
Next festival, Dock Street Theatre will have reopened.

— Thom Anderson is a retired journalist who has 40 years experience with South Carolina newspapers, including the Morning News. E-mail him at .