Sophia Beratta

SPRING SEASON ONLY Just how long does it take a jealous heart to cool? And how do you pass the time while it does? Spinning a world out of the 16-year gap at the heart of Shakespeare’s The Winter’s Tale, Mary Elizabeth Hamilton’s play 16 Winters, or The Bear’s Tale traces the journeys of the exiled queen and her loyal attendant, the jealous king and his dead son, and the abandoned princess and her rebellious artistic cohort.

In this rollicking farce, Shakespeare elevates Roman comedy to dizzying heights. Two long-separated twins, their two tricky servants (also twins), a jealous wife, and her lovelorn sister romp through this fast-paced comedy. Filled with mistaken identities and slapstick humor, The Comedy of Errors will have audiences laughing from the first confusion to the last.

Shakespeare’s magnificent late play is a roller-coaster ride from romance to tragedy to comedy and finally to a place of transcendent beauty that few other works of art have ever gone. “A sad tale’s best for winter,” but after unleashing a wintry tempest onto his characters, Shakespeare ultimately conjures spring’s miraculous rebirth.

In the aftermath of her brothers’ bloody war, Antigone is left torn. Her brother Eteocles will be honored, but her brother Polyneices will be shamed and denied funeral rites. In this ancient tale, Antigone stands for morality in spite of punishment as one of the earliest heroines in drama. Sophocles’s drama from 441 BC holds startling relevance today, examining divinity, obedience, and law – and how love overcomes them all.