Prague Shakespeare Festival & Classical Theatre Co Present AS YOU LIKE IT & KING LEAR

Prague Shakespeare Festival and Classical Theatre Company present As You Like It and King Lear beginning tonight, May 27 and running through May 29.  Times are @ 19:00 (7:00pm) - As You Like It, Saturday, May 28 @ 19:00 (7:00pm) - King Lear,
and Sunday, May 29 @ 14:00 (2:00pm) - As You Like It.

TICKETS:
200kc General Admission, 150kc Student/Senior
Available online:pokladna@praha-vysehrad.cz or by phone: 222.513.842
Available also at the Vyšehrad boxoffice in person

LOCATION:
Letni Scena - Summer Stage, Open-Air Theatre
Vyšehrad - Prague, Czech Republic

Enjoy Pivo and Shakespeare!!!

This is the final weekend of performances for the PSF/CTC productions of As You Like it and King Lear. Come experience Shakespeare as it was intended - in the open air, with food, drink, good company, amazing artists and the most stunning words ever spoken in the English language.
Buy your tickets now and find out why audiences and critics are raving about the productions (and read some of our reviews below).

Performed in English, both plays come to life via a unique artistic ensemble for the project, combining the best of PSF and CTC talent.
AS YOU LIKE IT
Quotes from Critical Reviews
Houston, Texas Performances
"Guy Roberts has created the most amusing, most innovative, and most compelling As You Like It this critic has ever experienced... I don't know if I have ever laughed so hard during a Shakespeare comedy....Certainly this is what the Bard imagined when he wrote this rollicking romp for the politically exiled, the lovelorn, and assorted undesirables...Jessica Boone as Rosalind and Ganymede pretty much steals the stage when she is on it."
- Buzz Bellmont, Houston Chronicle online critic

"As You Like It charms with wit and whimsy...Director Guy Roberts treats his actors like sheep - and gets great results - in the Classical Theatre Company-Prague Shakespeare Festival co-production of the merry romantic comedy As You Like It...Roberts maintains an informal air of communal storytelling that's hard to resist, both for the determined invention of the ideas and the energy and spirit of the cast....Jessica Boone is utterly winning as the witty, resourceful Rosalind, one of Shakespeare's most beloved heroines. All but the stuffiest souls likely will greet this impish As You Like It with a correspondingly playful, "I like it, I like it."
--Everett Evans, Houston Chronicle

"As You Like It will make everything all better. One of Shakespeare's most popular comedies, this play approaches the weighty subject of love with a sharp wit and a quick pace. The timelessness of the original text, coupled with the clever, modern styling of the production make for an altogether enjoyable experience...Guy Robert's direction is intuitive and sharp...His choices, such as leaving most of the actors onstage for the entirety of the play, provide multiple opportunities for humor, as well as helpful reference...These are the choices that allow an audience to stay focused on the action onstage, instead of squinting down at our programs and whispering "who's that guy, again?"...Houston Shakespeare Festival veteran, Jessica Boone, portrays a perfect Rosalind, from the once pouty girl at court, to the sophisticated and clever woman who utilizes disguise and wit to guide her own destiny. The diversity and size of this cast make it impossible to give each individual the roaring praises that they so greatly deserve. It is a strong ensemble effort, with great cooperation and trust apparent as each actor is given a moment to shine and to make the audience smile...little touches make this production unintimidating, consistently funny, and a perfect experience for Shakespeare-lovers and Shakespeare-phobics, alike. Start with As You Like It, move on to King Lear, and gift yourself a double helping of quality Shakespeare that will clear up any anxieties in no time."
-The Loop Scoop

KING LEAR
Quotes from Critical Reviews
Houston, Texas Performances
"Prague Shakespeare Festival/Classical Theatre Company Present Intimate, Powerful, Stunning KING LEAR...King Lear, easily considered one of Shakespeare's most dramatic and brilliant tragic masterpieces, is receiving a stunningly powerful production on the intimate thrust stage at Main Street Theater's Chelsea Market Stage...Guy Roberts has ingeniously directed King Lear with strong assurance and formidable grace in the classical style. Costumes are Elizabethan but the pace and acting is so powerful and stunning that we easily make the transference from period costume to Lear as a fable for the decaying and broken world of today... Mr. Roberts digs into Edmund, the bastard son of Gloucester who is one of Shakespeare's most provocative villains, with charisma and gusto...Rutherford Cravens is superbly stunning as the eighty year-old King Lear...Thomas Prior is phenomenal as the Earl of Gloucester, and becomes even more powerful and pitiable when Regan plucks his eyes out with a dagger...Jessica Boone is wicked to the bone as the sadistic Regan...Jeff S. Smith is amazing as Edgar, the legitimate son of Gloucester, shape shifting into a half naked madman in the second act."
- Buzz Bellmont, Houston Chronicle online critic

"A Masterful King Lear...There is so much to praise in the Classical Theatre Company and The Prague Shakespeare Festival's joint production of King Lear (which is playing in repertory with As You Like It) that I could fill a short review by simply listing everyone in the cast and crew and remarking on their excellence... Roberts, did a masterful job of conflating and editing two versions of Shakespeare's thunderous masterpiece, so that the play flies, reaching its tragic, corpse-filled finale in a trim two-and-a-half hours...The parallel plot involving Gloucester (Thomas Prior) and his two sons, Edmond the traitor (Guy Roberts) and the loyal but betrayed Edgar (Jeff S. Smith), is extremely well performed. The dashing Roberts (who also directed) revels in his character's Machiavellian evil, while Smith most impressively descends into feigned madness when Edgar takes on the disguise of Poor Tom...But while the secondary characters form an overabundance of dramatic possibilities, the play is titled King Lear for a reason. The foolish former king contains multitudes, and Rutherford Cravens registers powerfully in each of his phases....He wears the part's demands lightly, and doesn't stint on the humor. It's the performance of a career; I just hope that enough Houstonians--and Praguers (in May the production moves to the Czech capital) --take the opportunity to experience it. If you don't, you're missing quite a show."
-- David Theis, Houston Press

"King Lear at Main Street Theater delivers...moving and insightful moments... Rutherford Cravens Lear is...effective in quiet moments of sad realization or his eerily whispered nonsense after his mind has cracked...Jessica Boone's Regan [is a] smiling viper...bringing the right bite to [her] most vicious moments...Roberts' Edmund schemes with smiling efficiency and cunning."
--Everett Evans, Houston Chronicle

Widely acknowledged as Shakespeare's greatest tragedy and one of the greatest English-language plays ever written, King Lear is the devastating story of an aging monarch whose decision to divide his kingdom between his three daughters to prevent "future strife" only succeeds in sparking an avalanche of greed, betrayal and ruthlessness. Seduced by flattering professions of false love from his oldest daughters, Lear banishes his youngest daughter, Cordelia, for refusing to participate in the game of "which of you shall we say doth love us most?" Lear's rash actions annihilate his kingdom, his family and his mind. A towering exploration of a world in which everything is in domestic, spiritual and political upheaval bringing to the forefront questions on the nature of love and duty, power and loss, old age and youth, good and evil, King Lear is as resonant today as it was in 1606 when first performed and as it will be hundreds of years from now.

Of As You Like It, Guy Roberts says, "For Shakespeare love was a madness that drove people to do extraordinary things. It was a disease that could bring ultimate sorrow as in Lear or ultimate happiness as in As You Like It." Set in the mythical Forest of Arden As You Like It is one of William Shakespeare's most beloved and vibrant comedies. Sparkling with wit, this joyous tale of a girl disguised as a boy - who tempts the man she loves to fall for the boy she isn't - is flavored with all the longing and pain of everyone's first big romance. Uplifting, awe-inspiring and immense fun, Shakespeare's wondrous comedy is a joyous celebration of the liberating power of love, the redeeming spirit of nature and speaks that unforgettable truth, "All the world's a stage, and all the men and women merely players."

The productions will be adapted and directed Guy Roberts, Artistic Director of the Prague Shakespeare Festival. The productions are underwritten in part by PZ Adventures and are produced by the Classical Theatre Company and the Prague Shakespeare Festival.

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