THE COMEDY OF ERRORS and More to Conclude Madison Shakespeare Company 2025 Season

Madison Shakespeare Company has revealed the full details of its second-half 2025 programming, featuring works by the English playwrights William Shakespeare and Thomas Middleton.

The Comedy of Errors, presented July 18-27 at the Madison Country Day School amphitheater in Waunakee concludes MSC's 2025 outdoor season. This early Shakespeare comedy is a stew of physical comedy and punchy wordplay with concepts borrowed from the ancient Roman playwright Plautus, brought forward to a more contemporary time. It's the comedy of love at first sight, faith healing, chain-stealing, and double-dealing.

In Ephesus, Christian beliefs tangle daily with witchcraft, travelers bring money and goods from dozens of other nations and city-states, and identical twins can dip in and out of each other's lives without ever meeting. Staged during the Napoleonic wars when foreigners are eyed with deep suspicion, the aged Egeon has the misfortune to land at Ephesus in search of his long-lost sons without disguising his origins from hated Syracuse. Unknown to Egeon, his son Antipholus and faithful servant Dromio have also landed on Ephesus and quickly take on local disguise... which makes them look exactly like their forgotten identical twins, also named Antipholus and Dromio! The production is directed by John Hendel and features Travis Bedard, Laura Kochanowski, Malcolm McCanles, Birdie La Barre, and Bill Buchanan.

Women Beware Women will be Madison Shakespeare Company's first full-length presentation of a play by Thomas Middleton. Middleton was one of the lead voices of the younger generation of playwrights following Shakespeare and his contemporaries. In addition to his own plays, Middleton is considered a key contributor to modern published texts of Shakespeare plays including Macbeth and Measure For Measure.

Women Beware Women is set in a 1960s Italy still regaining its footing from the ravages of World Wars, and opens as eloped newlyweds Leantio and Bianca are just getting to truly know one another in the cramped home they share with Leantio's mother. When the Duke of Florence spots Bianca, however, he vows to have her for himself. Lusty widow Livia arranges the meeting-in no small part because she develops an eye for Leantio. What follows is a cycle of passion, betrayal, and revenge that everyone sees coming and no one can stop. The production will open Halloween night, October 31 at Madison's Bartell Theatre.