This year, if you see just one Dickens’ Yuletide story, let it be Chesapeake Shakespeare’s fine set-in-Baltimore A Christmas Carol. It has it all and then some: a nicely scary Jacob Marley’s Ghost (but not too scary for the little folk), lots of music, dancing, good acting, superior costumes, and a lightness and joy to the production.

A large cast of eccentric characters and a convoluted plot involving mistaken identities, a traveling troupe of itinerant actors, sailors, a deserted wife, a lascivious pastor and a virtuous Quaker- Wild Oats has it all, insofar as 18th century audiences were concerned. To judge by this show, too much was simply not enough in those […]

“Give the Public What It Wants”. This mantra of theatrical management goes back a long, long time, and long before he became the Elizabethan age’s Boy Wonder, William Shakespeare wrote a rather standard revenge play to pay the bills and bring in the crowds.

You know something? Shakespeare is funny. This production is a delight, and I am going to recommend it – wait for it- most especially for people who hate Shakespeare. The more you hate hate Shakespeare, the more you’ll be surprised by the knockdown dragout good time you’ll have in this rendition of Much Ado About […]

While not considered one the Bard’s richest works or given the most revelatory treatment, The Comedy of Errors makes for ideal picnic blanket theatre in Chesapeake Shakespeare Company’s lively and communal outdoor In-The-Ruins production. Its numerous twists, capers, and broad characters prove a great frame for the company to fill with seemingly every kind of […]

Inside the gorgeous brick edifice of the new Chesapeake Shakespeare Company home in Baltimore rises another brick edifice, this one made out of flat, painted wood but no less impressive. The handsome facades of both the real and the stage-set buildings suggest a bygone Baltimore: stately, hospitable, civilized. CSC’s new digs are an ideal home […]