The Utah Shakespearean Festival

CEDAR CITY — The 43rd edition of the Utah Shakespearean Festival opened June 24 on the campus of Southern Utah University in Cedar City with six productions rotating on three stages — the outdoor Adams Memorial Theatre (considered to be one of the most authentic Elizabethan theaters in the world), the Randall L. Jones Theatre and the newly refurbished Auditorium Theatre.

In addition to the plays and musicals, there is a weekly calendar of related activities — free play orientations, morning seminars of the previous night's productions, backstage tours, art exhibits and nightly Greenshow entertainment.

Also, from mid-August through Sept. 3, the Plays in Progress series will let USF audiences see staged readings of new works that are in development.

Following are reviews of this summer's six productions — the three Randall shows and the three Adams productions (one of which has additional matinees in the nearby Auditorium).

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Three Shakespearean classics — "The Winter's Tale," "The Taming of the Shrew" and "Henry IV, Part 1" — which range from light romantic comedy to brooding tragedy, are now onstage in the outdoor Adams Memorial Theatre.

• THE WINTER'S TALE (running time: three hours, with one intermission).

Half tragedy, half "fairy tale"-oriented comedy, "The Winter's Tale" touches on such spiritual themes as faith and forgiveness.

The first half focuses on King Leontes, of Sicily, and his rapidly deepening rage and jealousy over what he perceives as an adulterous relationship between his beloved queen Hermione and his cherished boyhood friend King Polixenes, of Bohemia. In fairly quick order Leontes orders his courtier Camillo to poison Polixenes (not carried out), packs Hermione off to prison and exiles her newborn daughter, into the woods, where she's expected to die (as he believes she was fathered by Polixenes).

The second half picks up 16 years later in Bohemia, where both Polixenes and Camillo have fled, and where the infant child was left and abandoned. But those 16 years have made a lot of difference. The child — named Perdita by the Old Shepherd and his son Willem, who discovered her — is now madly in love with handsome young Prince Florizel (Polixenes' son), who is unaware of her royal lineage.

The fast-paced comedy of the second half keeps the entire production from feeling three hours long. Director Fontaine Syer keeps things moving smoothly and has injected one unusual aspect into the staging.