Cambridge Shakespeare Festival

July sees the return of the UK’s best-loved open-air Shakespeare Festival. The Cambridge Shakespeare Festival 2011 runs from 11 July until 27 August. The festival takes place in a number of Cambridge University private gardens and promises to deliver some of Shakespeare’s greatest works in the timeless and magical surroundings of the College Gardens.

The Cambridge Shakespeare Festival includes performances of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Anthony & Cleopatra, Macbeth and Romeo & Juliet. Eight plays will be performed throughout the summer and up to 25,000 visitors are expected to attend the productions across the eight weeks of the festival.

The actors perform in period costume with live Elizabethan music adding authenticity to each production and the garden setting offers a unique atmosphere as the setting sun and moonlight provides the open-air venues with special lighting that could never be recreated inside a theatre.

Before each evening’s performance, the audience can picnic in the picturesque College Gardens before settling down to watch the actors bring Shakespeare’s plays to life with their dramatic interpretation of the Bard’s work.

The absence of the usual trappings of a stage production means that the focus remains on the actors themselves and brings the audience closer to the action. The Company presents each play in such a way that even those who are unfamiliar with Shakespeare can enjoy their first experience of the tragedy, comedy and history of Shakespeare’s plays.

Performances take place every evening during the Festival except Sundays and begin at 7.30pm. Tickets cost £15 and can be purchased on the Cambridge Shakespeare Festival website, on the door or in advance from City Centre Box Office on Wheeler Street.

Special charity matinee performances will be held on Saturdays at 2.30pm and support the Children’s Hospice in Milton and St. John’s Hospice on the Wirral. Click here for further details.

Below is a list of productions taking place during the Cambridge Shakespeare Festival:-

• A Midsummer Night’s Dream – 11 to 30 July – St John’s College Gardens
• Anthony & Cleopatra – 11 to 30 July – Robinson College Gardens
• The Winter’s Tale – 11 to 30 July – Downing College Gardens
• The Comedy of Errors – 11 to 30 July – Girton College Gardens
• Much Ado About Nothing – 1 to 20 August – King’s College Gardens
• Macbeth – 1 to 20 August – Trinity College Gardens
• All’s Well That Ends Well – 1 to 27 August – Robinson College Gardens
• Romeo & Juliet – 1 to 27 August – Girton College Gardens

Click here to see a video about the Cambridge Shakespeare Festival and experience the magic for yourself.

Images reproduced from cambridgeshakespeare.com

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