Flashback 1992: Wisconsin Shakespeare Just Plain Delightful

     The blog comments were disabled Friday, for reasons mysterious, but returned Saturday morning. The lacuna, annoying while it was going on, proved valuable, in that it reminded me how important comments are. To be blunt, I missed you guys. Saturday, after my field report on Little Louie's hot dog stand, regular reader Tony Galati mentioned Wisconsin's Mustard Museum, which sparked an "I've been there!" reaction. Thirty-four years ago. I'd have sworn I gave it more than the final paragraph of a story, but that is not the case. I was something of a trendsetter — I really like mustard — as its owner wouldn't be on David Letterman for another three years. This is also notable because it is not a column, but a travel story, though you'd be hard pressed to tell the difference. I did downplay my disgust at House on the Rock — I hated it so much I even hated my family, a little, for liking it, and only got through to the end by imagining calling in an air strike, the F-15s peeling out of the sky, in formation, firing their rampage missiles, me, from a safe distance, watching the whole thing go up with a satisfying "flumph!"

     The problem with getaway weekends is that everybody else in town seems to be always getting away to the same spot you are, so instead of escaping the city, you are only relocating a chunk of it.
     So it was with a certain amount of pleasure that I found myself in the decidedly unhip, genuinely off-the-beaten-trail town of Plain, Wis., with no noticeable points of interest other than being seven miles from Spring Green, where every vacant room was booked with urbanites flocking to the opening of the American Players Theatre's 13th season and to the pouting-puppy-in-stained glass, Emmett-Kelly-in-oils spectacle they call an art fair.
     All the Gothic mansion bed-and-breakfasts we would have normally booked ourselves into were filled, so we had to settle for the Kraemer House in Plain, which in its advertisements looks exactly like the regular, aluminum-sided, any-block-in-suburbia split level it is.
     I had my doubts, but the Kraemer House was a blessing in disguise. Since it was removed from the tourist-trap attractions of Spring Green, I instead had to explore the area around the house, which just so happens to be the sort of unspoiled farmland that makes us people who have at least four deadbolt locks on our doors feel we're really somewhere different.
     Early the first morning, while my wife slept, I took a stroll down Old Highway 23 and found myself walking through a landscape I had only previously seen in Marx farm playsets — mooing cows, flocking sheep, spindly windmills, old silos, growing corn.
     Equally uplifting is the American Players Theatre and its lovely outdoor venue, which also serves great, nearly homemade food and the always-welcome beer (try the Sprecher) and wine.
     I'll admit that, in my heart, I was torn between wanting to watch good theater and wanting my smug Chicago superiority confirmed by witnessing a lame Wisconsin stab at the Bard — a production that I dubbed "Cheesehead Othello."
     Thankfully, except for the costuming mistake of putting ridiculously huge musketeer hats on some of the principals, the production was first-rate: well-spoken, good swordplay, none of that standing-around-waiting-to-say-your-line body language that some regional productions feature.
     (The APT season runs through Oct. 4, alternating "Othello," "Much Ado About Nothing," "Our Town" and "A Midsummer Night's Dream." Performances are Tuesday through Sunday.)
     And, toward the end, when Desdemona says something about the heavens, there is the pleasure of angling your head up and taking in the stars, twinkling wildly, freed at last from the orange haze in Chicago.
     In addition to the theater we felt the need to take in the tourist sites of Spring Green. Having lived in Oak Park, we passed on Frank Lloyd Wright's Taliesin, one of the 100 or so examples of his brilliance within spitting distance of Chicago.
     Instead we subjected ourselves to a two-hour forced march through the Jacobian nightmare of the House on the Rock, Route 3 in Spring Green (608 935-3639), an everlasting monument to the idea that if you collect enough mouldering junk, 600,000 people will plunk down $13.72 a head to see it.
     There is no way to adequately describe the House other than to say it is a condensation of the dark, horrific underbelly of American culture, an historical atrocity of unrelenting creepiness offering up unrelated garbage - doll houses, odd figurines, doll-head vases, costume armor, old carriages, ship models, carousel horses, pipe organs and strange plants.
     We fled to the infinitely more-attractive Mustard Museum, 109 E. Main St., in nearby Mt. Horeb. A cheery, small, bright yellow store that offers, in addition to hundreds of mustards, a nose-tingling assortment of sauces, spices, condiments, chutneys, dips and toppings, a dozen or two of which are set out for liberal tasting by the owner and founder, Barry Levenson, a former Wisconsin assistant attorney general. Admission is free. (608-437-3986)