WESTWORD: Catch a Colorado Shakespeare Festival Show Before the Season Ends

The Colorado Shakespeare Festival wraps up its 2016 season this weekend on the University of Colorado Boulder campus. Read our capsule reviews of three of this season’s shows, all still playing.

(Above: Lindsey Kyler and Carolyn Holding in “The Comedy of Errors.” Photo by Jennifer M Koskinen.)

The Comedy of Errors. Egeon of Syracuse turns up in Ephesus searching for his lost son, Antipholus, and his son’s servant, Dromio — or, in this production ofThe Comedy of Errors, directed by Geoffrey Kent for the Colorado Shakespeare Festival, his lost daughter, Antiphola, and her servant, Dromia. Setting foot in Ephesus is death for any Syracusan, however. Confronted by the Duke of Ephesus and forced to plead for his life, Egeon tells his story of two sets of twins: one set lost, along with his wife, in a shipwreck, the other set searching for the first. Touched by Egeon’s story, the duke gives him time to…read more here.

Equivocation. At the intermission of Equivocation, the Colorado Shakespeare Festival’s traditional non-Shakespeare-but-related-to-Shakespeare offering this summer, I thought the play brilliant: inventive, original, deeply clever and on a daring and constant teeter-totter between tragedy and comedy. Playwright Bill Cain postulates that William Shakespeare (Shagspeare or Shag here) is summoned by Sir Robert Cecil to write a play about the Gunpowder Plot — the notorious conspiracy to blow up the Houses of Parliament, and with them the sitting king, James I. The task is…read more here.

Troilus and Cressida. The title Troilus and Cressida promises a love story, but this is love gone sour. In the early scenes between the couple, Cressida’s uncle Pandarus, who’s responsible for bringing the two together, takes most of the focus. Cressida’s declaration of love when she’s finally alone with Troilus is so brief that you don’t have time to figure out if it’s sincere. Which is important, because Cressida gets sent away from Troy to the Greek camp, and once there, she soon betrays Troilus. Is she just weak and vacillating, an opportunist, incapable of controlling her lust, or a strong woman doing what she needs to do to survive in a hostile place? Read more here.