DC locales make final prep for royal visit

With Prince Charles and his wife, Camilla, touching down in Washington on Tuesday, many locations hosting the pair are scrambling to ensure their venues are fit for royalty.

The Shakespeare Theatre Company in downtown Washington will play host to Camilla, the duchess of Cornwall, on Wednesday.

{mosads}“You have about 60 minutes to cover all the bases of everything that we want to present in the tour, and a brief performance,” Ed Zakreski, the theater’s chief development officer, tells ITK. “So for me, it’s like coordinating one of our annual galas, which we usually take a couple months to prepare. … I’m cramming what’s usually months of preparation and detail into two weeks.”

Everything, down to the minute, Zakreski says, must be choreographed and coordinated. “We’re making sure all of our staff and our patrons who have the possibility of interacting with her know the proper protocol.”

He’s been doing his research on what exactly that protocol is: “Upon first meeting, you address her as, ‘Your Royal Highness,’ and then in subsequent references in the conversation you may call her ‘ma’am.’ ”

While Zakreski’s team focuses some of its efforts on etiquette, Dean Norton is busy raking and moving boxwoods. Mount Vernon’s director of horticulture says it’s work that would typically be taking place anyway at George Washington’s estate, but it’s happening at a speedier pace ahead of Charles and Camilla’s visit on Wednesday.

“It’s a little crazy right now, but, you know what, it’s like having a party at your house. There’s nothing like a party to get you to clean up some things that maybe you hadn’t gotten to right away,” Norton says.

According to him, Washington would’ve been making the same preparations some 230 years ago. “He wrote his land manager that he expected an abundance of everything in the garden, for he was expecting the ministers of France, Portugal and Great Britain to arrive in succession, and other strangers as well. … He wanted it always to look its best.”

Norton, who’s worked at Mount Vernon for more than 45 years, was there for one of Prince Charles’s previous visits to the Virginia estate in 1970. While he didn’t get a chance to meet the heir to the British throne then, he’s “excited” for the chance this time around. He’s done his research and has gathered from it: “Don’t freak out. Don’t overthink it. Kind of let him lead the situation.”

Besides, Norton says, Prince Charles is a bit of a greenskeeper himself, having transformed the Highgrove Gardens at his home across the pond: “Because I’m walking around with someone that is a cohort of mine — even though he’s probably the future king of England and I’m just a gardener — we talk the same language.”