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Sun-drenched Messina or Sun Belt capital Atlanta — take your pick: The battle of the sexes rages as New York’s summer season gets underway, courtesy of the Bard, in Italy, and last year’s prodigiously talented Pulitzer winner, Ayad Akhtar, in the second. Shakespeare in The Park, the continuing gift of the Public Theater to people either willing to wait hours on line or shell out tax-deductible dollars to the House That Joe Papp Built, launches with director Jack O’Brien’s visually sumptuous and often rollicking – and unabashedly American — staging of Much Ado About Nothing. I use the words visually […]...

The Public Theater announced the line-up today for the 2014 free Shakespeare in the Park season, continuing a 52-year tradition of free theater in Central Park. Since 1962, over five million people have enjoyed more than 150 free productions of Shakespeare and other classical works and musicals at the Delacorte Theater. Conceived by founder Joe Papp as a way to make great theater accessible to all, The Public's free Shakespeare in the Park continues to be the bedrock of the Company's mission to increase access and engage the community. This summer, free Shakespeare in the Park will feature a comedy and a tragedy with Jack O'Brien directing Much Ado About Nothing and Daniel Sullivan directing King Lear.

She was born on Aug. 22, 1932, as Theoni Athanasiou Vachlioti, in Salonika, Greece. Her father, Athanasios, was an army general and politician. Her mother, Meropi, died when she was 5 years old. Upon seeing the 1946 film version of "Caesar and Cleopatra," Aldredge was inspired to become a costume designer, and she subsequently studied at the American School in Athens. Her father encouraged her to travel, and she immigrated to the United States in 1949 to attend Chicago's Goodman Theatre on a design scholarship.She married actor Tom Aldredge in 1953, and the two moved to New York City. Her first Broadway job came in 1959, creating costumes for Tennessee Williams' "Sweet Birth of Youth," starring Geraldine Page. In 1961 Aldredge worked on a New York Shakespeare Festival production of "Much Ado About Nothing," which began her long partnership with producer Joseph Papp. For 20 years she was the festival's principal designer.In 1974 producer David Merrick hired...