Cincinnati Shakespeare Company's MEASURE FOR MEASURE Opens Friday

Cincinnati Shakespeare Company, Cincinnati's stage for the classics, is pleased to present Shakespeare's "Measure for Measure", playing from May 3-26, 2013. This production is directed by CSC Producing Artistic Director, Brian Isaac Phillips and features Kelly Mengelkoch, Brent Vimtrup and Nicholas Rose. The design of this production is generously sponsored by Cincinnati Book Publishing.

In a city where any prohibited vice is readily available, stands Angelo, left in charge by an absent Duke. As he begins a crusade to enforce long forgotten codes of chastity, a young man's life is threatened. But when Isabella, a novice nun, pleads for the life of her brother, she is offered a truly indecent proposal to spare him from Angelo himself. Shakespeare puts hypocritical, ethical and religious double standards on trial in this captivating and deep examination of the value of virtue and the power of our vices.

Producing Artistic Director, Brian Isaac Phillips is excited to bring this play back to Cincinnati Shakespeare Company for the first time in 18 years. Mr. Phillips says "we have discovered a lot of satire and wit as we explore the biting social criticism in this play. The behavior of these characters, from Isabella, a novice nun, to a comic bawd like Mistress Overdone is like a dark comic mirror, held up to nature. Shakespeare has written a play that begs us to examine modern day decadence and hypocrisy." Mr. Phillips continues to say that "the setting for this production of 'Measure for Measure' will be in the prohibition era. We wanted to place this production in this era to help give modern audiences a context for the actions and deeply held opinions that characters in the play hold. We see the Duke carousing at a speakeasy with ladies, moral enforcers giving into lust and a sister asked to trade her virtue for her family and instantly must ask ourselves who represents right and wrong in such a world." The set is designed by award winning resident set designer, Andrew Hungerford. Resident costume designer, Heidi Jo Schiemer and resident sound designer, Doug Borntrager return to help create the gritty and precariously dangerous world of prohibition.