Mark Cofta’s theater picks: Shakespeare! Shakespeare! Shakespeare!

Two of our regional Shakespeare outdoor productions this year feature adventurous nontraditional casting. Both the Delaware Shakespeare Festival and Shakespeare in Clark Park chose local women actors to play male title roles: Emilie Krause in DSF's Henry V (July 14 through 30) and Charlotte Northeast in SCP's Coriolanus (July 26 through 30). Both characters are warriors and both shows are directed by women.

Jessica Bedford stages Henry V in a production that's otherwise traditionally cast. "We considered both men and women for the part," artistic director David Stradley explains, "and Emilie was the performer we were most excited about." Krause was featured in DSF's 2013 The Two Gentlemen of Verona, and has worked at the Arden, People's Light, and Theatre Exile. Also featured are Adam Altman, Carlo Campbell, David Pica, and Annette Kaplafka. Krause's young king, like many women in leadership today, is not taken seriously at first.

SCP artistic director Kittson O'Neill's Coriolanus features an all-female cast, along with a chorus of Philadelphians doing battle as Roman citizens. This political tragedy of manipulation and revenge has modern parallels and was recently seen in a modern-dress production by Lantern Theater Company (here’s my review). SCP's always-inventive use of the Clark Park bowl will increase the war spectacle in a more primitive fashion, with characters wearing barbarian skins and wielding axes. In addition to Barrymore Award winner Charlotte Northeast, recently seen in the Philadelphia Artists' Collective's The White Devil (here’s my review), the cast includes Emily K. Lynn, Judith Lightfoot Clarke, and Kimberly Fairbanks.

Traveling near and far

Commonwealth Classic Theatre Company's 13th annual Free Theatre in the Parks tour will be Romeo & Juliet (July 6 through 27), ranging from McMichael, Green Lane, and Penn Treaty parks in Philadelphia to suburban locations, including West Chester, Lansdale, and Brookhaven, plus Pilesgrove, New Jersey. Kathryn MacMillan, who staged CCTC's The Miser in 2010, works with Campbell O'Hare and Trevor William Fayle as the tragic lovers. Also featured are Paul Parente, Hannah Van Sciver, and Griffin Stanton-Ameisen, whose company, Revolution Shakespeare, will produce its own annual outdoor Shakespeare, Cymbeline, in September.

While the Pennsylvania Shakespeare Festival started its season with the musical Evita, running through July 2 (read the BSR review here), and The Hound of the Baskervilles, running through July 16, it’ll soon return to some of the region's best Shakespeare with As You Like It (July 20 through August 6). The romantic comedy is directed by Philadelphia's Matt Pfeiffer and features Dan Hodge, Ian Merrill Peakes, and music by Alex Bechtel. Playing in repertory with As You Like It on PSF's mainstage is Ken Ludwig's new adaptation of The Three Musketeers (July 12 through August 6), a swashbuckling spectacle of Shakespearean proportions directed by Rick Sordelet.

PSF also continues its nearly annual "Extreme Shakespeare" production with Troilus and Cressida (July 26 through August 6) in their Schubert Theatre. The seldom-seen comedy will be rehearsed as it was in Shakespeare's time, with actors arriving with lines learned for just a few days' rehearsal, with no director or designers. Like last year's Love's Labour's Lost, 2015's Pericles, 2013's Henry VIII, 2012's King John, and 2011's The Two Noble Kinsmen, this year's show employs a cast of smart veteran actors, including Philadelphia's Susan Riley Stevens, Greg Wood, Luigi Sottile, Anthony Lawton, and Brandon J. Pierce as Troilus.

Above: Trevor William Fayle and Campbell O'Hare will star in Commonwealth Classic's Romeo and Juliet. (Image courtesy of Commonwealth Classic Theatre Company.)