Shenandoah Shakespeare Express runs its sixth repertory season at Washington, DC's Folger Shakespeare Library, this time bringing Macbeth and Francis Beaumont's The Knight of the Burning Pestle, opening May 20. Performances began May 18.

Less known than Macbeth, Shakespeare's tragedy of a good man destroyed by ambition, Beaumont's Knight of the Burning Pestle was a take on the play-within-a-play in Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream and the theatre and acting traditions of Elizabethan England. Pestle was chosen specially as SSE's non-Shakespeare English Renaissance comedy.

Executive director of the SSE Ralph Alan Cohen directs Pestle. David Johnson directs Macbeth.

The company for both shows features Wyckham Avery, Clinton Brandhagen, Kila Burton, Chaon Cross, Gwendolyn Druyor, Walter Elder, Micahel Glenn, Jay Postell Pringle, David Schiller, Jason Stiles and Tom Summers.

Tickets are $25-$19 with special two play packages available. For more information, call the box office at (202) 544-7077. The Folger Elizabethan Theatre is located at 201 East Capitol Street, S.E. -- By Christine Ehren