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THEATER | ALBUQUERQUE

Friends, burqueños, countrymen

New Mexico Shakespeare Festival returns with ‘Julius Caesar,’ ‘The Winter’s Tale’

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‘Julius Caesar’

WHEN: 7:30 p.m. Friday, June 5, Saturday, June 6, Sunday, June 7, Thursday, June 18, Saturday, June 20, Friday, June 26, Sunday, June 28, Thursday, July 2, Sunday, July 5, and Friday, July 10

WHERE: Veteran’s Memorial Park, 1100 Louisiana Blvd. SE

HOW MUCH: Free, at 


‘The Winter’s Tale’

WHEN: 7:30 p.m. Friday, June 12, Saturday, June 13, Sunday, June 14, Friday, June 19, Sunday, June 21, Thursday, June 25, Saturday, June 27, Friday, July 3, Thursday, July 9, and Saturday, July 11

WHERE: Veteran’s Memorial Park, 1100 Louisiana Blvd. SE

HOW MUCH: Free, at 


The New Mexico Shakespeare Festival launches its 2026 summer season with free outdoor productions of Shakespeare’s “Julius Caesar,” directed by Marc Comstock, and “A Winter’s Tale,” directed by Gregg W. Brevoort, at Albuquerque’s Veteran’s Memorial Park.

Festival director Levi Gore, who will direct “Macbeth” in the fall, said he wanted to explore themes of power and passion this year.

“With ‘Caesar,’ we’re exploring the themes of political power, manipulation, ambition and public influence,” Gore said. “‘The Winter’s Tale’ examines jealousy and obsession, but ultimately the redeeming power of time and forgiveness.”

Julius Caesar

Comstock has chosen to set “Julius Caesar” in 1930s-era Italy, infusing the play with a film noir aesthetic and incorporating subtle allusions to fascism.

“I’m kind of a film buff, and I’ve been watching some film noir, and I thought, ‘Wow, “Caesar” lends itself to that,’” Comstock said. “There’s a conspiracy, so there’s a lot of talk in the shadows.”

One film in particular that informed his vision was “The Third Man” by Orson Welles.

“It’s all about secrets and who holds the power, and other people listening everywhere. It’s just so tense in its underbelly,” Comstock said. “… I thought a lot of those elements are also in ‘The Third Man.’ … So, I just took that as my jumping-off point, and then I’ve been working with our amazing design team to see how we could translate that onto the stage.”

Comstock hopes his production will appeal to fans of fast-paced thrillers and crime films, even if they don’t think of themselves as Shakespeare aficionados.

“My goal is to make this a fast-moving, suspenseful story that just happens to have Julius Caesar at the center of it,” he said.

Although he has set the play in a fictionalized version of 1930s Italy, his Caesar is not meant to be Benito Mussolini. Comstock has, however, incorporated ’30s-era technologies, including radio, to highlight the theme of mass media as a potential propaganda tool.

“When Mark Antony is giving his ‘Friends, Romans, countrymen’ speech, and Brutus is giving his equivalent of that, they’re being broadcast … on the radio,” Comstock said.

The Winter’s Tale

Brevoort, who is directing “The Winter’s Tale,” is based in Los Angeles but freelance directs all over the country. This will be his first production with the New Mexico Shakespeare Festival.

“It’s definitely a challenging play, and it’s not one that’s too commonly produced, although … if you talk to directors, especially Shakespeare directors, it tends to be the project that they really want to do, or it’s one of their favorites,” Brevoort said. “… It comes very late in (Shakespeare’s) career, and in that period he’s doing all kinds of bizarre, strange things.”

Although classified as romance, “The Winter’s Tale” begins as a tragedy and includes elements of comedy and fantasy. For his production, Brevoort said he wanted to lean into the play’s fairy tale elements.

“At the top of Act 2, there’s a child, the king’s son, (who) basically says, ‘This is a tale best told for winter.’ So, that forced me to look at the whole play and try to find a certain frequency of magical, bizarre dramaturgical elements. And I did find a consistent stream of them,” Brevoort said.

Several of Brevoort’s cast members also contributed ideas that enhanced the fairy tale quality of the production. Lola Yarrington, a high school student who has a small but important role as a servant in the Sicilian court, mentioned during an early table reading that one passage reminded her of Walt Disney’s “Beauty and the Beast.”

“I’m like, ‘That’s exactly right … Please tell me more,’ and I gave her the floor. She expressed what she was talking about, and we all kind of riffed on it,” he said.

For Leontes, the jealous king, Brevoort said he initially imagined a serious, austere interpretation of the role. That all changed when Jack Litherland, who is normally a comic actor, showed up to the audition.

“He did a monologue from Dogberry in ‘Much Ado about Nothing,’ which is a very comic role. Apparently he played Dogberry about a year or two ago, and he just did Uncle Fester in ‘The Addams Family’ in a local production. So, this is clearly a comic actor. He’s got the physicality, and he’s obviously got the comic chops,” Brevoort said. “… But I said, ‘You know what? I think this guy needs to be Leontes’ — an otherwise jovial, nice, friendly guy who our sympathies as an audience could go out to, but then something snaps and he goes ballistic.”

Brevoort said audiences are sometimes intimidated by Shakespeare, and especially by his lesser-known plays, such as “The Winter’s Tale,” but he hopes people will give up their preconceptions and just come out and enjoy themselves.

“I think we’re going to have a very accessible show,” Brevoort said. “It’ll be a roller coaster, because we go from tragedy to comedy and cover the whole gamut. It should be very entertaining.”

The plays are performed outdoors, and audiences are encouraged to bring blankets, folding chairs and snacks.

Logan Royce Beitmen is an arts writer for the ϼ. He covers visual art, music, fashion, theater and more. Reach him at lbeitmen@abqjournal.com or on Instagram at .