All of Cedar City's a stage

King Lear | Twelfth Night | Lend Me a Tenor: The Musical | The Matchmaker | Coriolanus | Candida

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CEDAR CITY — The settings for the six productions at the 46th annual Utah Shakespearean Festival range from ancient Rome to 1934 Cleveland — but all six resonate today with messages and mirth for contemporary audiences.

For light-hearted romance, there are Shakespeare's poetic "Twelfth Night" and Thornton Wilder's meddling "Matchmaker."

Political and social turmoil propel "Coriolanus" to its tragic conclusion.

A seriously dysfunctional family sets the tone for "King Lear."

George Bernard Shaw's comedy of manners, "Candida," focuses on a British woman faced with choosing between her husband (a workaholic minister) and a bright young ... very young ... poet.

The festival's world premiere of "Lend Me a Tenor: The Musical" is a wild, door-slamming farce with an original score (by transplanted Utahns Peter Sham and Brad Carroll) that captures the essence of both grand opera and the jazz-influenced music of the mid-1930s.

The performances this season are consistently flawless across all six shows, and the production values are what you'd expect from a Tony Award-winning professional company, with elaborate costuming and first-rate scenery.

Most of the productions aren't geared to youngsters (you may have to duck down to Tuacahn's "Cinderella" for that), but families enjoy the nightly — and free — Greenshow entertainment, staged in the plaza adjacent to the outdoor Adams Shakespearean Theatre, with dancing, music and crafts demonstrations.

The festival's pricing and calendaring will change dramatically next season. For 2008, there will be more expensive "premier seating" in the first three rows, which will also include early-seating privileges, bottled water and other perks.

The presentation of next year's plays will change a bit, without a set-in-concrete weekly schedule. They'll be juggled around so that patrons who can only attend on a particular day of the week can see all six plays over three or four days.

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