Utah Shakespearean Festival offers month of autumn delights

Thursday, Sept. 18, 2003 | 8:28 a.m.

Light-hearted comedies by Shakespeare along with more modern dramatists are opening for a monthlong run at the Utah Shakespearean Festival in Cedar City, Utah.

"The festival's highly-acclaimed summer season has just come to an end and we're only days away from opening three new comedies," Fred C. Adams, the Utah Shakespearean Festival founder, said.

The festival offers lighter fare for autumn days amid the spectacular fall colors of Cedar City, Adams said.

Shakespeare's "The Comedy of Errors" debuts Friday in the Randall L. Jones Theatre.

The opening performance of "Little Shop of Horrors" is scheduled for 2 p.m. Saturday, followed by "The Importance of Being Earnest" at 7:30 p.m., also in the Randall L. Jones Theatre.

The fall festival season runs through Oct. 18, Adams said.

"The Comedy of Errors" will be directed by John Neville Andrews. The play is one of Shakespeare's youthful comedies. Antipholus and Dromio are bewildered, for everywhere they go, they seem to have already been there.

Filled with twins and mistaken identities, the play unfolds as the twins try to unravel a series of lunatic events, and, of course, the harder they try the more farcical they lives become.

Mushnik's Flower Shop is the setting for "Little Shop of Horrors," a modern musical comedy by Howard Ashman with music by Alan Menken.

Paul Barnes directs the festival's look at an exotic plant more vampire than vegetable.

Oscar Wilde wrote some of the most memorable lines in English literature when he penned "The Importance of Being Earnest."

J.R. Sullivan directs this comedy classic at the Utah Shakespearean Festival.

The plays will rotate, two each day at 2 p.m. and 7:30 p.m. Monday through Friday in the Randall L. Jones Theatre.

The Utah Shakespearean Festival is located in Cedar City, about a three-hour drive northeast of Las Vegas on Interstate 15.

The theater is located east of Southern Utah University.

For ticket information call 1-800-752-9849 or visit the festival's website at www.bard.org.