Shakespeare comes to South Africa

"The Maynardville open-air theatre in the South African capital of Cape Town is on a par with New York's Central Park or London's Regents Park as a dramatic location.

It is hard to think of many more pleasant ways of passing a warm evening than a well-performed Shakespeare play in beautiful surroundings, and that is just the experience that all of these deliver.

However, unlike Londoners and New Yorkers, the residents of Cape Town don't need to wait until June to guarantee weather good enough for enjoying a relaxing picnic before the show.

Shakespeare in Maynardville, at the junction of Church Street with Wolfe Street, runs from January 19th until the end of February, and started in 1956 with the raucous early comedy, The Taming of the Shrew.

More recently things took a bloodier turn, as the organisers tried their hands at tragedy with Macbeth in 2004, but things got lighter again last year with the banter between two of the Bard's most well known lovers, Beatrice and Benedick, in Much Ado about Nothing.

This year it's the turn of one of the most enduring and cherished comedies ever written, Twelfth Night.

Cross-dressing, crooning and a touch of crassness come together to create a true classic in one of the top city destinations in the world. "