Idaho Shakespeare Festival

“Nobody can work a vocal break like Patsy Cline. That vocal break will break your heart. It's really incredible.”

“Is there a way to kind-of un-gnarl this?”

Where can you go to find Agatha Christie's "Murder on the Orient Express," William Shakespeare's "A Midsummer Night's Dream" and Patsy Cline? The answer is next season's Idaho Shakespeare Festival, which has an amazing line up for 2024.

To be sure, the Idaho Shakespeare Festival mounts classic center-stage. But there are many elements of the 2024 season, announced Wednesday on Morning Edition, that are very new: from a stage adaptation of Agatha Christie’s "Murder on the Orient Express," to a contemporary spin on William Shakespeare’s "A Midsummer Night’s Dream."

When the new musical Natasha, Pierre and the Great Comet of 1812, opened in New York it took Broadway by storm and garnered no less than 12 Tony nominations. But because of the pandemic, not many people outside of New York have seen the musical. Now however, the musical is coming to Idaho an will be premiering at the Idaho Shakespeare Festival this weekend.

When the new musical Natasha, Pierre and the Great Comet of 1812, a modern telling of a slice of Tolstoy’s War Peace, opened in New York recently, it took Broadway by storm and garnered no less than 12 Tony nominations.

Next month, the Idaho Shakespeare Festival will start a new season on the grassy hillside in South Boise. This year includes the return of a carnivorous plant, an electropop comet and Dracula. Oh, and there will be some Shakespeare too!

The Idaho Shakespeare Festival takes a look back at the last year of performances and gives us an idea of what we can expect to see in 2023.

Morning Edition host George Prentice received a unique request from the Idaho Shakespeare Festival. And with each evening’s production of the rollicking musical Little Shop of Horrors, more people have learned the “secret.”

What’s the most unique take on the Faustian legend? How about an all-singing, all-dancing musical featuring a man-eating plant? When the soon-to-be-legendary team of Howard Ashman and Alan Menken (they would go on to pen Beauty and the Beast, The Little Mermaid, and other Oscar winners), chose a little-known 1960 black-and-white film as the basis of a musical, they would set a new standard for tongue-in-cheek theater.