A summer of Shakespeare in St. Louis opens with a Cuban-inspired ‘Twelfth Night’

For lovers of theater, a St. Louis summer doesn't truly start until Shakespeare is being performed in Forest Park. That moment will come May 31, as the St. Louis Shakespeare Festival opens its annual run of free performances.

This year, that performance is “Twelfth Night,” a roughly 400-year-old play that in its day created some of the same tropes that audiences still enjoy in modern romantic comedies. In a new twist, the festival’s 2023 version of “Twelfth Night” will be set in “glamorous, celebrity-filled Miami.”

Tom Ridgley, the producing artistic director of St. Louis Shakespeare Festival, praised the vision of director Lisa Portes, whose father immigrated to the U.S. from Cuba.

“She saw in this story, of Viola and Sebastian arriving in Illyria, a story not unlike the story of her family. She saw in a world that was full of… all the wealth, of dukes and countesses and things like that, a world not unlike Miami or southern Florida.”

There’s even more Shakespeare in the works this summer: In August, the festival’s touring production of “The Merry Wives of Windsor” — directed by Cherokee Street Theater Artistic Director Suki Peters — will go on the road to 25 parks in the St. Louis region. “Merry Wives” will also have shows in Hermann, O’Fallon and the Metro East in Illinois.