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Bath Hosts Fifth Annual Shakespeare Fest, 3-15 Mar

The fifth annual Bath Shakespeare Festival launches today (3 March 2003). The two-week event - running until 15 March 2003 at Bath's Theatre Royal - features seven Shakespearean productions from companies out of the UK as well as the US, Georgia, Zimbabwe and Germany, many of them presenting UK premieres.

In the main house, Bremer Company's production of The Comedy of Errors - about identical twins, separated at birth, and their identical twin servants - opens the festival from 3 to 6 March. Directed by Sebastian Kautz, it's performed in German with English surtitles.

The schedule continues on 7 and 8 March with Othello from Concentric Circles, the UK company which debuted last year with a London production of Phaedra starring Sheila Gish. In the new production, directed by joint artistic director Christopher Fettes, Ricky Fearon will play the title role of the Moor.

New York-based company The Splinter Group bring a new version of the bard's most enduring love story to the festival from 11 to 15 March. In Shakespeare's R and J (pictured), four schoolboys at a strict Catholic Boys' School stumble across a forbidden copy of Shakespeare's text and act it out in secret. Adapted and directed by Joe Calarco, the play ran for 18 months Off-Broadway and now receives its UK premiere, co-produced by Theatre Royal Bath Productions.

The three main house productions are complemented by four Studio offerings, starting with A Midsummer Night's Dream performed by local Bath residents (3 to 5 March); followed by Shakespeare - The Truth! performed by Desmond Olivier Dingle (aka Patrick Barlow) of National Theatre of Brent renown; a dance version of Hamlet by Compagnie Mimodram of Tbilisi in Georgia; and an African take on The Taming of the Shrew from Zimbabwean troupe, Over the Edge.

- by Terri Paddock

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