Griffith Park Shakespeare Festival to Open Next Week

Pack your picnics, shake out your blankets, and grab your friends: next Thursday, Shakespeare (and a friend or two) return to the Old Zoo in Griffith Park!

The first play of Independent Shakespeare Co.'s season is....Oliver Goldsmith's She Stoops to Conquer or The Mistakes of the Night. It's not a play by Shakespeare, but it shares traits with Shakespeare's great comedies: eccentric characters, absurdly comic situations, and deep warmth. First performed in 1773, it was an immediate success.

Taking place over the course of one very hectic night, the witty heroine Kate Hardcastle (played by Claudia de Vasco) is courted by the exceedingly odd Charles Marlowe (played by David Melville). He's a smart, well-educated man with prospects. His biggest flaw? He can't make coherent sense when in the presence of a virtuous woman. When he makes the trek to the Hardcastle home, he's pulled into a scene of mistaken identity and jolly subterfuge unrivaled in dramatic literature. As Kate decides what to do with her remarkable suitor, the hour grows later and her heart grows fonder. Alongside this tale of romance, the rest of her eccentric family get caught up in in their own mistakes of the night.