There's going to be a different Midsummer Night's Dream at San Diego's Globe Theatres, and Lone Star Love or The Merry Wives of Windsor, Texas now has someone to lasso the production. Director John Rando will replace the previously announced Tony Award nominee Daniel Sullivan (Proof, A Moon for the Misbegotten) on Shakespeare's best loved comedy, while Sullivan oversees the move of Off-Broadway's Ten Unknowns to Broadway. Great Britain's Michael Bogdanov will helm Love, the new Shakespearean musical told through the bluegrass stylings of the Red Clay Ramblers.
Rando most recently brought two big New York hits to life— Neil Simon's The Dinner Party and the scatologically-titled Off-Broadway musical Urinetown. For the Old Globe, he directed The Comedy of Errors, A Moon for the Misbegotten and Sylvia. A Midsummer Night's Dream runs Sept. 22-Oct. 27 in the Old Globe Theatre.
Long associated with Shakespeare, Bogdanov joined the Royal Shakespeare Company in 1969, where he assisted on Peter Brook's ground-breaking A Midsummer Night's Dream. He served as artistic director of London's Phoenix Theatre and the Young Vic Theatre and directed with the Royal National Theatre from 1980-88. Bogdanov won the 1990 Olivier Award for staging the seven play history cycle The War of the Roses with his English Shakespeare Company. In the states, he helmed Timon of Athens for Chicago's Shakespeare Repertory Theatre and The venetian Twins for the Minnesota's Guthrie Theatre.
Lone Star Love runs on the Lowell Davies Festival Theatre Sept. 2 Oct. 13. Conceived and adapted by John L. Haber with music and lyrics by Tony winner and Rambler Jack Herrick (Fool Moon, Kudzu), Lone Star Love resets William Shakespeare's Merry Wives of Windsor in post-Civil War Texas. There, ex-Confederate colonel John Falstaff and his merry men charm their way into the lives of two wealthy rancher's wives. In a romantic subplot, one of the rancher's daughters is being pursued by several suitors including a yodeling cowboy named Tex Fenton.
Lone Star Love has long held the interest of Broadway producing arm Dodgers Theatricals and may very well be hoping for a Full Monty-esque transfer from the Globe to Broadway. — By Christine Ehren
