Jul 25, 2025

Artistic Director Doug Scholz-Carlson and Other Manifold Creative Forces Stage Spectacular Interpretations of Shakespeare’s Comedy of Errors, Romeo and Juliet, and Two Gentlemen of Verona at Great River Shakespeare Festival 2025

Doug Scholz-Carlson is a highly thoughtful, creative artistic force who always has a prominent role in selecting the plays to be performed each season at the Great River Shakespeare Festival;  his selections are always thematically relevant to contemporary issues.  

 

Scholz-Carson’s personal directorial turn this year was in Comedy of Errors, for which he made the brilliant decision to insert a soliloquy from Sir Thomas More (a play now widely thought by scholars to have been written by Shakespeare but until recent years often left out of the 38-play canon of the Bard);  the inserted speech within that play constitutes a plea for acceptance and celebration of immigrants in 15th century London. 

 

One can also see his creative vision at work in the selection of Romeo and Juliet, emphasizing with great vigor that play’s abiding theme as to the personal and societal misery caused by internecine conflict and violence.

 

With the selection of Two Gentlemen of Verona, Doug and the other creative forces at the festival have been able to comment in the context of the latest events and issues of the Trump Tribulation on the willingness of certain personalities to betray friendship, move impulsively from one romantic object to another, and to construct and execute schemes for one’s own gratification at the expense others.

 

The culpable being in Two Gentlemen is Proteus, who simultaneously betrays fellow gentleman Valentine and Julia (his Verona-based betrothed) when, sojourning in Milan (Valentine having arrived before him), he quickly distances himself from thoughts of Julia and turns his lustful attention toward Silvia, Valentine’s beloved and fellow prospective eloper. 

 

Contriving a plan to undermine his rivals, both Valentine and Thurio (to whom Silvia’s father aims to marry her), Proteus finds himself in the end spurned by both Julia (who, carrying forth the Shakespearean trope of traveling female dressed as male, treks to Milan thinking that Proteus will be thrilled when she reveals her identity) and Silvia.  In a very powerful final scene, the frustrated Proteus makes a violent move on Silvia, inducing the returned Valentine to constrain his erstwhile friend and leave him alone and dishonored at mid-stage at play’s end.

 

Much of this resonates with foibles of the Trump Tribulation, generally and with regard to the Jeffrey Epstein degradation.  Handling of the young lovers is different from other Shakespearean plays, in which the Bard cloaks themes pertinent to fickleness, impulsiveness, and infatuation in plot devices resulting in forgivable misunderstandings and, consequently, reunited lovers.  But in this case, neither Valentine nor Julia is inclined to forgive Proteus;  further, Silvia immediately and abidingly saw through the protests of love from the disloyal and unfaithful Proteus, establishing herself as quite a noble heroine.  She and Valentine, whose union is now blessed by Silvia’s father, reunite more firmly and lovingly than ever.  But there is decidedly no reunion for Proteus and the virtuous and dignified Julia.  Proteus, spurned for his disloyalty and unfaithfulness, is left all alone and bereft at the.  WE are reminded that Shakespearean plays classified as comedies nevertheless often issue very serious comments on human nature. 

 

The production of Two Gentlemen of Verona was lively, witty, and well-paced, with spare and playfully selected props that suggested rather than literally presented the physical setting and items therein. The actors were very talented students in the drama program at the University of Tennessee/Knoxville who played their parts with great skill and radiant enthusiasm.  

 

While Comedy of Errors and Romeo and Juliet were staged in the usual Great River Shakespeare Festival venue, the performing arts center of Winona Stage University, Two Gentlemen of Verona was performed at the enormously scenic venue of the National Eagle Center amphitheater.

 

 

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