Stratford-Upon-Lake-Michigan: Royal Shakespeare Company Plays Chicago

The Royal Shakespeare Company, which keeps the plays of William Shakespeare alive in the town of his birth, was long a regular presence in the United States. It brought Ian McKellen to Brooklyn as King Lear, built a replica of its main theater in an Upper East Side drill hall and sent a stream of shows to Broadway.

But in recent years the renowned troupe has taken fewer overseas trips from its home in Stratford-upon-Avon, England.

Now, for the first time since the coronavirus pandemic, the company has returned to the United States — but not to New York, where some of the main importers of European work remain diminished and disoriented. It has struck up a partnership with Chicago Shakespeare Theater, which is led by Edward Hall, whose ties to the Royal Shakespeare Company run unusually deep: His father, Peter Hall, the eminent British director, founded it.

“My love of Shakespeare grew up from my father talking to me about Shakespeare, and why he was passionate about Shakespeare, and why he thought Shakespeare endured, and quoting Shakespeare,” he said. “I watched him work a bit, and then, like every child, you go off into a corner and find your own way, which is what I did.”

His earliest memory of Shakespeare is watching “The Wars of the Roses,” directed by his father, when he was 4 or 5, and “seeing a lot of people in armor with very exciting-looking weapons.”