A Bard act to follow

Friday, June 26, 1998 | 10 a.m.

For Utah Shakespearean Festival founder Fred Adams, this summer's production is not just another show opening.

This year's festival offers four plays by William Shakespeare and two modern pieces, "Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dream Coat" by Tim Rice and Andrew Lloyd Webber, and "Relative Values" by Noel Coward.

As Joseph had a dream in the Book of Genesis bible story, Adams had a dream and has brought Shakespeare to life on stage every summer since 1961's modest production on a soap box in Cedar City, Utah. Last year the festival attracted 44,000 people from Las Vegas.

The 37th annual production of the Utah Shakespearean Festival opened this week.

This season, Adams will revive a role he has not played in 17 years -- as director of the original version of the song and dance-filled family musical "Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dream Coat."

"It is the ultimate success story," Adams said. "It is a play for our times, when many are looking for an easy way out, rather than sticking to their convictions and dreams and being successful in the end."

For those who love Shakespeare, re-created each night under the stars in the open-air Adams Shakespearean Theatre, "The Taming of the Shrew" debuted on Thursday.

This war between the sexes has delighted audiences since the Renaissance, and has been a favorite through the years at the Utah festival.

For a gentle, rollicking good time, playgoers can sample "All's Well that Ends Well," another Shakespeare comedy that proves that callow youth is no match for true love and a determined woman.

The festival traditionally offers those who return year after year a rarely produced Shakespeare play. Adams insists that show-goers will eventually see every play written by Shakespeare.

This summer is no exception with "King John."

Remember John's historical roots: He's a villain familiar to modern audiences as the greedy schemer who worms his way into the "Robin Hood" legend, the would-be usurper of King Richard's throne.

The play begins with kings, churches and individuals as they struggle for power. Through deceit, war, revenge and murder, this is one of Shakespeare's most revealing plays. "King John" is set during the period when nobles changed the face of early English government, forcing the king to sign the Magna Carta.

Shakespeare presents John as a more humane monarch: He loses France, and struggles in the shadow of his brilliant family, especially his father, Henry II, mother Elinor of Aquitaine and brother, Richard Coeur-de-Lion, a k a Richard the Lion-Hearted.

Since this play is intriguing and a rare one, Shakespeare lovers won't want to miss it, Adams said.

To round out the season, there's "Romeo and Juliet," filled with young, forbidden love, as well as the passion and defiance of death itself.

And, to contrast romance in Shakespeare's time with a more contemporary one, the festival will include Noel Coward's "Relative Values," in which an upper-class boy wishes to marry an actress, something his family can't understand.

Moxie the maid pulls and pushes the various characters until their values come back into perspective.