Silver Spring, MD — She Stoops to Conquer, a rollicking 2008 production of Oliver Goldsmith’s funniest, most famous play, will be released on DVD from Acorn Media on February 10, 2009. The five-episode series features a stellar cast including Mark Dexter (The Bill, From Hell), Roy Marsden (Devices and Desires), acclaimed newcomer Susannah Fielding, and veteran stage actors Polly Hemingway and Ian Redford. The DVD also includes a lively 50-minute documentary on the playwright’s life, work, and humor.

Without changing a word of the original text, this new production takes a distinctly unstodgy approach to Oliver Goldsmith’s lighthearted farce. Shot in and around a stunning Jacobean manor house, it employs cutaways, close-ups, and sunny exteriors to give the play contemporary visual appeal. The delightfully convoluted plot centers on Kate (dazzling newcomer Susannah Fielding), a well-bred, whip-smart lass who poses as a barmaid to win the heart of her stuffy suitor, Charles Marlow (Mark Dexter). Full of mistaken identities and multiple deceptions, the play pokes fun at the various masks we all wear in social situations and proves as relevant now as it did when it debuted in 1773. Along the way, Goldsmith’s conniving characters learn much about the nature of true love.

Filmed entirely at a 17th-century English manor house, this production escapes the confines of the stage and enlivens Goldsmith’s witty text in every scene.

She Stoops to Conquer premiered on Britain’s Sky Arts channel in January 2008 but has not yet aired in the U.S. The series is written and directed by Tony Britten.

Special Features: A Gooseberry Fool: Oliver Goldsmith Stoops to Conquer, a lively 50-minute documentary on the writer’s life, work, and humor.

The play continues to be studied in theatre and English literature classes in the United States and Great Britain, and it is one of the few plays from the 18th century still regularly performed.

Headquartered in suburban Washington, D.C., Acorn Media distributes distinctive home video releases to the North American market with a special focus on the best of British television. Acorn’s DVD sets are available from select retailers, catalog companies, and direct from Acorn Media at (888) 870-8047 or www.acornonline.com.