Summer Shakespeare at San Diego's Old Globe

"A Midsummer's Night Dream" and more roll out at the beloved venue.

YE OLDE SAN DIEGO: Of all of Britishy things that have taken route in the Golden State -- authentic pubs and tearooms and Brit Week and fashion shows and car shows and repeat -- few things are as time-honored and venerable, both, as San Diego's Old Globe Theatre. We broke out the lofty "time-honored" because the Old Globe's roots extend back to the California Pacific International Exposition. Nope, that doesn't make it quite as old as its namesake in London -- because that might be weird, right, and history-defying? -- but it does mean that it is coming up on its 80th birthday in a few years. What this all adds up to? Thousands and thousands of Bard-produced words, and dozens and dozens of Bard-written works, over the decades. The Shakespeare Festival is perennially popular, and it just doesn't seem like a San Diego summer without it. (If any brochure writers want to TM that, go for it, because it is true.)

AND THE FEST IS OFF AND ENTERTAINING ON.. Sunday, June 2 with "A Midsummer Nights Dream," which, if you will recall from school, is not the most tragic of plays. Quite the opposite, given that it stars Puck, a puckish sprite who has pretty much been responsible, in some ways, for all fictional sprites to follow. (That's some fantasy-cred right there, boy howdy.) "The Merchant of Venice" grinds up on Sunday, June 9, and, yep, Tom Stoppard's "Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead" hits the boards on Sunday, June 16. This trio of 'peare plays, or plays based on Shakespeare, will enjoy long warm-weather runs; each wraps close to the end of September.

If you call yourself a Bard buff or an Anglophile and haven't yet done the Old Globe thing, stop moving that down your list. Nope, you can't walk along the Thames afterward, but the Pacific is just a couple of miles away.

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