Overview

Blackstone Audio is proud to present the Oregon Shakespeare Festival's production of Measure for Measure, Shakespeare's compelling tragicomedy that explores restraint--and lack thereof. Who legislates morality? The duke's authoritarian deputy, Angelo, is hell-bent on stamping out moral decay. He reactivates outdated draconian laws and aims his arrogant crosshairs at a young man whose fiancée is pregnant, sentencing him to death. Angelo is sternly incorruptible--until he meets Isabela, a beautiful religious novice whose desirability arouses him. Flavored with live music by the mariachi band Las Colibri, this vigorous, modern production of Shakespeare's tragicomedy reveals what can happen when sex, religion, and politics collide.

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9781455137510

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Reviews

It brings before us a group of persons, attractive, full of desire...Behind this group of people, behind their various action, Shakespeare inspires in us the sense of a strong tyranny of nature and circumstance. -- Walter Pater, essayist, art critic, and fiction writer Mr. Rauch knows his business, and this smart, swift, refreshingly unpredictable Measure is one of his finest efforts yet. Not only is every detail of the transposition from Vienna circa 1600 to corporate America circa 1970 worked out with rigorous comic logic, but the cast is fabulously good. -- Wall Street Journal on the Oregon Shakespeare Festival's theatrical production of Measure for Measure I do not know any other eminent work of Western literature that is nearly as nihilistic as Measure for Measure, a comedy that destroys comedy. -- Harold Bloom Four stars...this deeply illuminating production should satisfy. -- Sacramento Bee

Four stars...this deeply illuminating production should satisfy. -- Sacramento Bee It brings before us a group of persons, attractive, full of desire...Behind this group of people, behind their various action, Shakespeare inspires in us the sense of a strong tyranny of nature and circumstance. -- Walter Pater, essayist, art critic, and fiction writer Mr. Rauch knows his business, and this smart, swift, refreshingly unpredictable Measure is one of his finest efforts yet. Not only is every detail of the transposition from Vienna circa 1600 to corporate America circa 1970 worked out with rigorous comic logic, but the cast is fabulously good. -- Wall Street Journal on the Oregon Shakespeare Festival's theatrical production of Measure for Measure I do not know any other eminent work of Western literature that is nearly as nihilistic as Measure for Measure, a comedy that destroys comedy. -- Harold Bloom

Author Information

William Shakespeare (1564-1616), English poet and dramatist of the Elizabethan and early Jacobean period, is the most widely known author in all of English literature and often considered the greatest. He was an active member of a theater company for at least twenty years, during which time he wrote many great plays. Plays were not prized as literature at the time, and Shakespeare was not widely read until the middle of the eighteenth century, when a great upsurge of interest in his works began that continues today. Bill Rauch became OSF's fifth artistic director in 2007, after several seasons at the Festival as a guest director. In a total of fourteen seasons there, he has directed five world premieres and sixteen other plays. Established in 1935, the Tony Award-winning Oregon Shakespeare Festival offers an eight-month season with a wide-ranging playbill of eleven productions, including Shakespeare, American classics, musicals, contemporary works, and world premieres. Plays originating at OSF have gone on to be produced by many regional theaters, and its productions have been recognized and honored nationally. In 2011, the Blackstone Audio and Oregon Shakespeare Festival collaboration of Hamlet was nominated for a Grammy Award for Best Spoken Word Album. Dylan Thomas was born in Swansea, Wales on 27 October 1914. In 1934 his first book of poetry, Eighteen Poems appeared, followed by Twenty-five Poems in 1936, Deaths and Entrances in 1946 and in 1952 his final volume, Collected Poems. He also published many short stories, wrote filmscripts, broadcast stories and talks, did a series of lecture tours in the United States and wrote Under Milkwood, the radio play.During his fourth lecture tour of the United States in 1953, a few days after his 39th birthday, he collapsed in his New York hotel and died on November 9th at St. Vincent's Hospital. His body was sent back to Laugharne, Wales, where his grave is marked by a simple wooden cross.In June 1994, his wife, Caitlin Thomas, died in Italy, where she had spent most of the years of her life after the death of Dylan Thomas. Her body is buried next to his.

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