And this year’s musicals? Well, KISS ME, KATE, of course – Cole Porter’s 1948 tour de force musical adaptation of Shakespeare’s TAMING OF THE SHREW (4 performances at the Hult Center’s Silva Concert Hall, July 29-August 6). And THE BOYS FROM SYRACUSE, Rodgers & Hart’s wildly funny 1938 send up of the bard’s A COMEDY OF ERRORS (6 performances at The Shedd Institute’s Jaqua Concert Hall, July 23-August 7).
The festival’s concert series opens Wednesday, July 28th at the Hult Center's Silva Concert Hall with SWINGIN’ THE DREAM, a hot evening of classic swing built around Jimmy Van Heusen & Eddie Delange’s 1939 swing version of A MIDSUMMER NIGHT’S DREAM. That series closes on Saturday, August 7th with I COULD WRITE A BOOK, an evening that explores the interrelationship between mid-century jazz and popular music and American “urban” literature featuring the work of F. Scott Fitzgerald (who filled his books with jazz and popular music references), Damon Runyon (whose characters Frank Loesser memorialized in GUYS AND DOLLS), and John O’Hara whose PAL JOEY letters in The New Yorker inspired Rodgers & Hart’s extraordinary musical of the same name