Livermore and Old Globe

California Festivals Announce Lineups

Two theater companies in California, the Livermore Shakespeare Festival in Northern California's wine region and The Old Globe in San Diego, have announced their summer Shakespeare festival lineups for 2012.

For its 10th anniversary season, Livermore Shakespeare Festival has scheduled The Merry Wives of Windsor and Hamlet. The choice of these two plays is emblematic of the festival celebrating a decade of growth, festival officials said. Merry Wives offers an opportunity for the festival to return to the style of comedies with which it started, while the more mature play of Hamlet allows the festival to showcase how much it has matured as a company.

All Livermore Shakespeare Festival productions are played at the Concannon Vineyard, where theater packages allow audience members to enjoy wine tastings and picnics preceding their plays.

In San Diego, Adrian Noble will return for his third season as the artistic director of The Old Globe's Summer Shakespeare Festival and direct As You Like It while Lindsay Posner, former associate director at London's Royal Court Theatre, will direct Richard III. Both Shakespeare plays will run in repertory with the Noble-directed Inherit the Wind at the Lowell Davies Festival Theatre. Written in 1955 by Jerome Lawrence and Robert E. Lee, Inherit the Wind is the now-classic drama based on the Scopes “Monkey” Trial of 1925.

The Old Globe's summer season also will feature the West Coast Premiere of Divine Rivalry by Michael Kramer with D. S. Moynihan and the San Diego premiere of Yasmina Reza's Tony Award-winning play God of Carnage.

November 19, 2011

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