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To celebrate the 100th anniversary of one of England's most beloved classics of literature - Kenneth Grahame's The Wind in the Willows - Shakespeare Santa Cruz brought us back through a century of endearing riverside escapades of Mole, Rat, Toad & Badger, complete with the antics of the naughty Weasels, and the eventual and proper recovery of Toad Hall! "It’s the whimsy of the anthropomorphic friendships among the unlikely quintet of wildlife that makes Willows so successful, and Shakespeare Santa Cruz has the necessarily fine cast to pull it all off perfectly. - Santa Cruz Sentinal
The production proudly featured UTB artistic collaborators Paul J. Susi as Mr. Badger and Todd Tressler as Mr. Ratty, UTB friends Karl Hanover as Mr. Mole, Laurie Strawn as the Bargewoman and Mike Ryan as Mr.Toad - as well as an ensemble of UCSC Theatre Arts majors and ten child performers. The script was newly adapted by Kate Hawley, one of the several holiday creations she has penned for the Holiday Show winter entertainments that have become a fanciful tradition for SSC's devoted audiences. Bay Area reviewers called this Willows: "A triumph." and "A winner." 
"Designed to please...engaging and delightfully whimsical. [The production] moves happily through the various adventures and misadventures at a nice pace...a nice array of clever staging techniques to keep [the] audience engaged...sweetly endearing and deftly entertaining."
The Ensemble: Mike Ryan, Todd Tressler, Karl Hanover, Paul Susi, Laurie Strawn, Karin Babbit, Ricardo Calderon, Lily Burnett...and a large ensemble of UCSC Theater Arts students, as well as ten young actors portraying various forest creatures. Original Composition: Rodolfo Ortega
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