"Love's Labour's Lost", "The Blue Comet" Cap Madison's Classic Theater Season
Wisconsin Eagle/10277531

MADISON, Wis. - WisconsinEagle -- Madison Shakespeare Company today announced the full details of its second-half 2024 programming, featuring works by the English playwrights William Shakespeare and Eden Phillpotts. The two comedies rounding out the 2024 season are both rarely presented in south-central Wisconsin, and mark the start of a new era for the theater organization.

Love's Labour's Lost, presented August 9-18 at the Madison Country Day School amphitheater in Waunakee concludes MSC's 2024 outdoor season. This early Shakespeare comedy is cherished by enthusiasts for some of the best poetry in the canon, and is presented as a fast-paced adaptation perfect for the dog days of summer. Set in the present day, young King Ferdinand has exhausted the methods offered by podcast gurus and TikTok stars, and devises his own plan for ultimate masculine power and enlightenment. It's a strict three-year course of study, exercise, minimal sleep, intermittent fasting—and zero contact with women. Zero contact, that is, besides a high-stakes negotiation with the neighboring Princess of France and her entourage of young women. Directed by Annie Jay, who also directed the previous three installments in MSC's A Valentine's Affair series.

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The Blue Comet will be Madison Shakespeare Company's first presentation as a Resident Company of Madison's Bartell Theatre, with performances November 1-9 on the Drury stage. Set in outer London of the 1920s in the home of the pleasantly artistic Bedale family, the story opens in the middle of a three-pronged crisis. Expenditures on books, paints, and exotic hens far exceed the family income. A giant rogue comet is on a collision course with Earth. And a long-lost Australian relative is coming to visit. Faith and scientific convictions are challenged by the impending end of the world, and the gravitational pull of cousin Christopher disrupts the order of things long before the comet's arrival. The comedy by prolific author Eden Phillpotts was performed extensively in England in 1926-1927 but has never before been fully staged on American soil.

Madison Shakespeare Company has produced engaging and accessible classic theater in south-central Wisconsin since 2012. For further details please visit https://www.madisonshakespeare.org.