Commedia Beauregard Presents CORLEONE: THE SHAKESPEAREAN GODFATHER, Now thru 6/24

This Friday, Commedia Beauregard, a Chicago-based theater company dedicated to producing plays in translation, opens its final production of the 2011-2012 Season. Corleone: The Shakespearean Godfather will be presented at the Greenhouse Theater Center, 2257 North Lincoln Avenue Chicago, Ill.

The production opens tonight, June 1 at 7:30p.m. Remaining shows are scheduled for Thursdays through Saturdays at 7:30 p.m., Sundays at 2:30 p.m. through June 24, 2012.

Corleone: The Shakespearean Godfather takes Mario Puzo’s characters and asks, “What if Shakespeare had written The Godfather? Would Michael have been a prince and Fredo a fool?” David Mann’s play answers that question, exploding into a poetic bloodbath of Shakespearean proportions. The result is an exciting mix of iambic pentameter and gangster drama.

This year marked the 40th anniversary of Francis Ford Coppola’s film. "The Godfather was the greatest movie of its time," says Commedia Beauregard Artistic Director Christopher O. Kidder. "It tells a great story." As with Shakespeare’s works, The Godfather is proving to be not merely of an age, but for all time.

Corleone: The Shakespearean Godfather was a hit at the New York and Minnesota Fringe Festivals. It is presented in Chicago as an expanded, full-length production that is an entertaining combination of contemporary and classical.

The cast features Jerome Marzullo, Nathan Pease, Richard Traub, Duke Faeger, Phillip Zimmerman, Chris Lysy, Jovan King, Abby Stark, Christina Romano, and Jeremy Cohn.

Tickets are $25, and can be ordered in advance through www.cbtheatre.org, or by contacting the Greenhouse Theater Center box office at 773-404-7336.

Show Dates: May 31 @ 7:30 p.m. (preview); June 1-2, June 7-9, June 14-16, and June 21-23 @ 7:30 p.m. – June 3, 10, 17 and 24 @ 2:30 p.m.

The mission of Commedia Beauregard involves producing works in translation. Recent productions include Bard Fiction (a Shakespearean translation of Pulp Fiction), A Klingon Christmas Carol – the only full length play performed in tlhIngon Hol (the alien language created for Star Trek) – and Master Works: The Museum of Bad Art Plays (translating from paintings to short plays).

Commedia's mission is to translate the universal human experience to the stage; to expand our horizons and share knowledge of all cultures, translating between languages and between arts to create theater that is beautiful in expression.