Are We on the Edge?

Will Power: The Course of Love

Running Time: 1 hr, 30 min

The Austin Shakespeare Festival is on a roll. Previously content to produce a free summer Shakespeare production or two in Zilker Park, the festival now produces year-round, indoors as well as outdoors, and fields a 63-member company of artists. Close on the heels of its often-effective Titus Andronicus and its deeply moving The Winter's Tale at Austin Playhouse comes this compendium of scenes, songs, and sonnets in which ASF's Robert Matney draws on no fewer than 21 of the Bard's 38 plays to explore that thorniest of human subjects, love.

While some might think of it as Shakespeare's greatest hits, it's really more of a Shakespeare sampler, relatively short and comparatively sweet, like the chocolate hearts that the actors offer the audience at the start of the show. On a stage strewn with red and white rose petals and using little more than some paper, a sword, and a large gold ring, director Matney moves his actors adroitly through pieces both well-known (Ophelia's mad scene from Hamlet) and not so well-known (Constance's tremendous speech about grief from King John). He gets effective performances from Craig Clary as a moon-faced Orlando, Nicole Zook as a pensive Juliet, Michael Mergen singing beautiful songs with original music by Zita Sound, and especially Gemma Wilcox, who makes Shakespeare's rich, complicated verse sound like first thought. The tempo never lags, and the quality of the work presented is awe-inspiring – but then, it's Shakespeare.

So where was the audience? Earlier this year, ASF had to go begging just to come up with funds to present the productions currently on the boards. This is a worthy company trying to build something important and lasting, and trust me, they ain't making a living at it. They're doing this – what a coincidence! – for love. So help them out: Go. You're guaranteed to get something tasty and fun. (Saturday, Jan. 31, 2pm; Sunday, Feb. 1, 6pm)