Shakespeare festival fall season focuses on love, seduction and danger

The course of true love never did run smooth.

William Shakespeare made that observation in "A Midsummer Night's Dream."

But it also applies to the three plays that make up the Utah Shakespeare Festival's fall season, which kicks off Thursday in Cedar City with the Bard's early comedy "Two Gentlemen of Verona."

An adaptation of Bram Stoker's vampire classic "Dracula" follows on Friday. And on Tuesday, the frolicsome "Charley's Aunt" returns to the Randall following a summer run.

"These three plays together pack a lot of entertainment punch," says "Charley's Aunt" director David Ivers, who's also one of the festival's two artistic directors.

The fall's focus on "young love and seduction — and different types of love" makes the season's trio of plays "thematically resonant," adds Brian Vaughn, the festival's other artistic director.

Not that most people think of "Dracula" as a romance. But Dracula himself — alias actor Tyler Pierce — considers the tale "a love story on many levels."

For starters, there's the betrothal of Mina (played by Kelly Rogers) and solicitor Jonathan Harker (Brendan Marshall-Rashid).

As "Dracula" commences, Harker's in Transylvania, doing business with a certain mysterious count who's out for blood — in more ways than one.

Pierce spent the summer in Cedar City playing "King Lear's" embattled Edgar, while Marshall-Rashid portrayed Edgar's duplicitous brother Edmund.

"We flipped the relationship," Pierce points out. "He was evil in the summer — and I'm evil in the fall."

Even so, "the first thing they teach you in acting school is to embrace your character, don't judge him," Pierce says of playing Dracula. "I've had fun coming up with motivations. And any good character is motivated by love."

Through the decades, Dracula has proven he's nothing if not a good character — one who's been portrayed dozens of times in dozens of ways.

The festival adaptation, by Steven Dietz, is "as faithful a version as you could find," notes "Dracula" director Jesse Berger, who's back at the festival for the first time since 2008 (when he directed a previous "Two Gentlemen" production).

As in Stoker's novel, "Dracula's" title character is "really timeless," Berger says, "and he's timeless today. Even in the original novel, he's already centuries old — a creature out of time."

Although "Dracula's" human characters "do get reinvented through new productions," and are "definitely creatures of their time period," the director explains, "their passions, loves and fears are immediately recognizable" to audiences of any era.

The same holds true for the fall's comedies, both of which involve masquerades, cross-dressing and mistaken identity.

In "Two Gentlemen," pals Proteus (Tasso Feldman) and Valentine (John Maltese) travel from their hometown, Verona, to the big city of Milan.

Proteus' departure prompts his sweetheart Julia (Betsy Mugavero) to disguise herself as a male, Sebastian, and follow him to Milan.

There, she finds herself in a love triangle — make that quadrangle — when Proteus not only falls for Valentine's beloved Silvia (Jamie Ann Romero) but hires Sebastian to act as his go-between while he tries to woo Silvia.

"What makes 'Two Gentlemen of Verona' unique among Shakespeare's romantic comedies is that he has written a quartet of protagonists who are undeniably immature," notes director Robynn Rodriguez, whose "King John" launched the festival's ongoing history cycle in 2013.

"The unattractive behavior, the moodiness, the lack of impulse control and the volatility of emotions displayed" by the play's young couples, she notes, "are typical of people in the throes of adolescent purgatory."

In "Two Gentlemen," which Rodriguez sets in 1920 Italy, Julia masquerades as a male.

But the cross-dressing gets a gender reversal — and a time shift — in the Victorian-era romp "Charley's Aunt," as two Oxford University chums (played by Marshall-Rashid and Feldman) persuade their wacky pal (Michael Doherty) to pose as the title character so they can woo two charming young ladies (Rogers and Mugavero).

"It's such a funny play — and with heart, too," in Ivers' view. Although "the play is fast-paced, the lifestyle isn't, the society isn't" — and revisiting that time proves "extraordinarily charming."

Find more stories from Carol Cling at reviewjournal.com. Contact her at ccling@reviewjournal.com and follow @CarolSCling on Twitter.