Chicago Shakespeare Theater on Navy Pier is adding to its programming a new CST Festival, a mix of performances to be held annually each fall and spring. A highlight of the first season is the exclusive U.S. engagement, Dec. 4-23, of English actor Simon Callow’s one-man show “The Mystery of Charles Dickens” on the theater’s main stage. Other festival attractions include the previously announced musical “Pacific Overtures” in the upstairs theater, Oct. 10-Dec. 2; and a Nov. 6 program of music by the Iquitos Ensemble, with members of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra playing “The Soldier’s Tale” by Igor Stravinsky and “A Fiddler’s Tale Suite” by Wynton Marsalis.
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Tentatively booked for spring in the upstairs theater is director Peter Brook’s production of “Le Costume” (The Suit), set in the days of apartheid in South Africa and performed in French, with English supertitles, by members of Brook’s Theatre des Bouffes du Nord in Paris. Also on tap are Chicago’s Redmoon Theater’s adaptation of Ernest Hemingway’s “The Old Man and the Sea” and a chamber music concert by the Burnham String Quartet and the Evanston Chamber Ensemble.