At the end of a three-day celebration of the Utah Shakespeare Festival’s 2016 season and the opening of the new Beverley Taylor Sorenson Center for the Arts, the festival’s artistic directors announced the plays for the 2017 season.
The season, which will run from late June through late October, includes nine plays. Actual dates will be announced soon. Tickets will go on sale beginning in August.
The Engelstad Shakespeare Theatre
William Shakespeare’s “Romeo and Juliet” and the theatrical adaptation of the Academy Award-winning movie “Shakespeare in Love” will play at the Engelstad Shakespeare Theatre. “Shakespeare in Love” is about young William Shakespeare, who, out of ideas and short of cash, meets his ideal woman and is inspired to write one of his most famous plays, “Romeo and Juliet.” These interdependent story lines provided the impetus behind the festival producing these two plays in repertory with a shared cast and set.
The festival has been selected as one of three theaters to present the first United States productions in the United States. It is based on the original screenplay by Marc Norman and Tom Stoppard with the stage adaptation by Lee Hall.
The Engelstad Theatre will also present the Shakespeare comedy “As You Like It.” This tale of confused courtship between Rosalind and Orlando was last produced at the festival in 2009.
Those who have been following the festival’s cycle of all ten of Shakespeare’s history plays produced in chronological order may notice that there is no history play in the 2017 season. The festival will continue the cycle in 2018, using the coming year to develop a production approach for the “Henry VI” plays, which will tell the story of the War of the Roses and the Tudor dynasty.
The Randall L. Jones Theatre
Four plays will fill the stage in the Randall L. Jones Theatre in 2017, offering a variety of genres and stories.
First will be the classic musical “Guys and Dolls.” It ran for over 1,200 performances when it opened on Broadway in 1950. Winner of many Tony Awards and numerous other theater prizes, it has been frequently revived and has proven to be perennially popular.
Next will be Mary Zimmerman’s glorious adaptation of the Robert Louis Stevenson novel “Treasure Island.” This critically-acclaimed adaptation premiered in a joint production by Lookingglass Theatre in Chicago and Berkeley Rep in Berkeley, California. The festival is the next theater to receive rights to this play.
“A Midsummer Night’s Dream” will also appear in the Randall Theatre. This story of fairies, dreams, and moonlight tells the tale of feuding fairy kings and queens and young lovers caught up in the world between waking and dreaming. Perhaps Shakespeare’s most accessible comedy, the entire family will enjoy the antics of Puck, Titania, and Nick Bottom and his hilarious band of rustics.
Playing later in the summer in the Randall L. Jones Theatre will be a world-premiere adaptation of the satirical comedy “The Tavern” by George M. Cohan. Joseph Hanreddy, who adapted “Sense and Sensibility” for the festival in 2014, is adapting this hilarious play and shifting the action and plot to locations and characters in Utah. As such, it is a dark and stormy night when a mysterious vagabond, a damsel in distress, and a politician all end up at a remote Utah tavern where they try, amid rising suspense and misunderstandings, to solve a recent robbery.
The Eileen and Allen Anes Studio Theatre
Neil LaBute’s “How To Fight Loneliness” receives its first staged reading at the festival this summer in preparation for the full production in 2017. LaBute recently had two successful shows close off-Broadway, and another, “All the Ways To Say I Love You,” opens this fall at MCC Theater. He and his work have been recognized with Tony Award nominations and Arts and Letters Awards in Literature. “How To Fight Loneliness” explores a modern-day husband and wife who are at a life-changing crossroads and struggling to make monumental decisions about life and love.
“William Shakespeare’s Long Lost First Play (abridged)” was written by the same authors responsible for “The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (abridged).” The play tells the fictional story of an ancient manuscript purported to be the first play written by William Shakespeare.
“This is a season with something for everybody, and one that propels us into the next stage of our development as a theatre company,” said Joshua Stavros, media and public relations director. “As Shakespeare said in ‘Measure for Measure,’ ‘Look forward on the journey you shall go.’”
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We already booked our Bed and Breakfast for next year, the problem is we can not find what plays will be playing the week we come, which is very important so we can decide if we should change our plans or not..Please help with this issue.. Thank you Theresa Grace