Macbeth/Midsummer

March 19-May 9, $35, Philadelphia Shakespeare Theatre, 2111 Sansom St., 215-496-8001, phillyshakespeare.org.

by Mark Cofta

theater

Philadelphia Shakespeare Theatre adds to an already-impressive local celebration of the Bard — including the Arden's Romeo and Juliet, People's Light & Theatre Co.'s King Lear, Missoula Oblongata/Puppet Uprising's Julius Caesar and Lantern's upcoming Henry IV Part 1 — with their spring repertory of Macbeth and A Midsummer Night's Dream. For PST artistic director Carmen Kahn, they're tied by magic, which Shakespeare uses as a metaphor to expose characters' psychology. Still, these plays are night and day: "Macbeth is a nightmare about the aftermath of killing another person, and the descent into a meaningless existence and nothingness," Kahn says, while Dream is a romantic comedy "about the liberation of the self from the tight bonds of society." Since PST's hired the same actors for both productions, they might not feel so different.