McCarter Theatre Center and The Shakespeare Theatre Company Open THE WINTER'S TALE, 4/2

McCarter Theatre Center, in association with The Shakespeare Theatre Company, will present Williams Shakespeare's The Winter's Tale, directed by Rebecca Taichman, April 2 through April 21. Opening night is Friday, April 5.

Tragic, romantic, hilarious, and uplifting, The Winter's Tale is a genre-bending masterpiece and one of Shakespeare's most elegant and haunting plays. Directed by Rebecca Taichman (Sleeping Beauty Wakes,Twelfth Night), this gorgeous, music-filled, and magical classic celebrates redemption, reconciliation, and the mending of broken hearts. Princes and princesses, disguised identities, jealous kings, oracles, pickpockets, and one ravenous bear-if you haven't seen The Winter's Tale before, don't miss this opportunity!

The cast features Sean Arbuckle, Todd Bartels, Brent Carver (Tony Award-winner for Kiss of the Spider Woman), Mark Harelik (Broadway: The Light in the Piazza, The Normal Heart), Nancy Robinette, Tom Story, Ted Van Griethuysen, Heather Wood, and Hannah Yelland (Tony nominee for Brief Encounters).

The Winter's Tale design team includes sets by Christine Jones, costumes by David Zinn, lighting by Christopher Akerlind, sound by Matt Tierney, original music by Nico Muhly, and choreography by Camille A. Brown. The production stage manager is Alison Cote and assistance stage Manager is Samantha Flint.

About the work, director Rebecca Taichman said, "The Winter's Tale is a study in tonal collision-sliding from tragedy to comedy and back again. We careen through the dangerous, moneyed Sicilian court, into the comic Bohemian countryside, and back again. The play contains multiple and ever-shifting webs of meaning. As a director, the visual and theatrical challenges are...well...absurdly difficult and wonderfully exciting."

Tickets for Williams Shakespeare's The Winter's Tale range from $20-$67, and are available online atwww.mccarter.org, by phone at (609) 258-2787, and in person at the McCarter Theatre ticket office (91 University Place, Princeton). Student and group rates are also available.