Shakespeare, William

Subterms

    More stories

    • 88 Shares149 Views

      in Theater

      At the Ruhrtrienniale, Industrial Ruins Become Stages

      by

      The best productions at the Ruhrtriennale festival created a sense of unity with their unique, often vast, settings.For six weeks each year, the Ruhrtriennale festival transforms the economically depressed Ruhr region of northwest of Germany into ground zero for cutting edge art and performance.Since 2002, this lavishly funded event, which puts on roughly 30 productions each summer, has lured artists and audiences to Germany’s rust belt with its robust and unexpected programming. And whereas many of Europe’s summer arts festivals can feel interchangeable, the Ruhrtriennale is devoted to works that can’t be experienced the same way anywhere else. Many have been created specifically for the postindustrial sites that dot the region.Earlier this month, the Ruhrtriennale’s artistic director Barbara Frey inaugurated her third and final festival program with her own staging of “A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” presented in the Kraftzentrale, the cavernous former power station of a disused steel and coal plant. It was the opening salvo in an interdisciplinary program, running through Sept. 23, that includes an immersive production of a Janacek opera and an art installation in a Brutalist church.The desolate set for “A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” designed by Martin Zehetgruber, features rusting cars half-sunken in the earth and sparse trees that suggest Shakespeare’s enchanted forest is on the verge of collapse. This is a gloomy “Midsummer,” both visually (thanks to Rainer Küng’s lighting) and atmospherically, and while it is enlivened by fine acting by a troupe of 10 performers, the production itself is oddly sterile and detached. Dorothee Hartinger’s wry and insouciant Puck and Oliver Nägele’s gruff and bittersweet Bottom are standouts. However, most of the time, the actors, drawn largely from the permanent ensemble at the Burgtheater, in Vienna, recite Shakespeare’s text with fine, crisp diction, but without truly inhabiting their characters.Cast members from “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” from left: Meike Droste, Marie-Luise Stockinger, Sabine Haupt, Markus Scheumann, Sylvie Rohrer, Gunther Eckes, Oliver Nägele and Langston Uibe.Matthias Horn/Ruhrtriennale 2023For a play that dances on the threshold between dream and waking, and art and reality, Frey’s production feels like a slow waltz. (The frequent music box-like tinkering by an onstage musician quickly grew tiring.) There is much to admire, but little to quicken the pulse.I missed the site specificity of the festival’s most memorable productions. When Florentina Holzinger staged “A Divine Comedy” at the Kraftzentrale, in 2021, she made fuller use of the space to create an infernal cabaret-variety show. Although I was not a fan of that production, I must admit that Holzinger’s spectacularly overstuffed staging, featuring joyriding motorcycles and cars, and even a grand piano suspended from the ceiling, was visually stunning. By contrast, Frey’s production, which will transfer to the Burgtheater in September, seems designed for any theater with a rotating stage.There was greater sense of unity between the production and the venue at the world premiere of Gisèle Vienne’s “Extra Life,” at the Salzlager, in the city of Essen.Two years ago Vienne, a distinctive French choreographer and director, was at the Ruhr with her clammy and hallucinatory chamber piece “L’Étang” (“The Pond”). While that previous work was insistently small-scale, with two actors playing 10 roles on a mostly bare set, “Extra Life” embraces the vastness of a former salt storage facility.From left: Theo Livesey, Katia Petrowick and Adele Haenel in “Extra Life,” at the Ruhrtriennale in Essen, Germany.Katrin Ribbe/Ruhrtriennale 2023Like “A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” Vienne’s latest creation is a nocturnal piece. In the vast, often fog-shrouded confines of the Salzlager, she unspools a simple yet enigmatic tale about two estranged siblings (Adèle Haenel and Theo Livesey), who reunite at a party and rekindle their relationship, sifting through a painful family history. A third character (Katia Petrowick), who emerges during their long night of the soul, might be a kindred spirit who follows them from the party into the woods. Or perhaps she is a composite of figures from the siblings’ past, or of unconscious wishes.This is a demanding and elliptical production, in which much is implied, but little is ever settled. Vienne and her fellow artists achieve uncanny and cathartic effects through pared-down dialogue, controlled slow-motion choreography and dazzling laser stage lighting (by Yves Godin) that suggests both being at a club and inside a video game. Immersed in the swirl of fog, lasers and a synthesizer score by Caterina Barbieri, the audience seems bathed in postindustrial electricity.With its disquieting blend of surreal and blandly quotidian elements, “Extra Life” can be an exasperating puzzle. It’s best to just surrender to its visual and sonic rhythms over the course of its unhurried 140 minutes. Over the coming months, the production will travel to Germany, Belgium, Switzerland and France.This is Frey’s last summer leading the Ruhrtriennale. Her time at the festival has widely been judged a success, especially next to the troubled reign of her predecessor, Stefanie Carp. But the creators Frey championed were often extreme, or obscure.From next year, the Belgian director Ivo van Hove will be in charge. Like his predecessors, he is sure to put his stamp on the festival, and there is no doubting that van Hove has a questing and disruptive bent. The Ruhrtriennale will give him his biggest canvas yet. I’m curious to see how he chooses to fill the Ruhr region’s majestic cathedrals of industry.RuhrtriennaleThrough Sept. 23 at various venues in northwestern Germany; ruhrtrienniale.de. More

    • 213 Shares99 Views

      in Theater

      Book Review: ‘The Great White Bard: How to Love Shakespeare While Talking About Race,’ by Farah Karim-Cooper

      by

      In “The Great White Bard,” Farah Karim-Cooper maintains that close attention to race, and racism, will only deepen engagement with the playwright’s canon.THE GREAT WHITE BARD: How to Love Shakespeare While Talking About Race, by Farah Karim-CooperWas my relationship to Shakespeare and race in need of a reality check?I asked myself that question as I did the 50-yard dash to catch the G train for a rehearsal of “Hamlet,” clutching in my hand a copy of “The Great White Bard: How to Love Shakespeare While Talking About Race,” by Farah Karim-Cooper. The book takes a necessary look under the hood of the plays, delving into the Elizabethan and Renaissance ideals of race and how Shakespeare helped shape and define them. “Instead of worshiping his words,” Karim-Cooper writes, interrogating them “allows us to confront crucial questions of our day.”As a Black actor who has had the chance to play many of the plum Shakespearean roles, had I been looking at his work through rose-colored glasses? Of course I knew there was racism in Shakespeare, but to what extent? This question is top of mind in drama schools and theaters of late, with Shakespeare’s relevance at stake. I know because I’ve been brought to campuses to discuss it.So this summer I made “The Great White Bard” my trusted, troubling and fascinating companion on train rides, during rehearsal breaks, in dressing rooms and backstage, while working on Shakespeare’s greatest play on arguably New York’s greatest stage, the Delacorte Theater in Central Park.Karim-Cooper, a director of education at Shakespeare’s Globe theater and a professor at King’s College London, is not merely analyzing from a distance; she’s an eyewitness on the front lines. Since 2018 she has helped put together festivals on “Shakespeare and Race” at the Globe — facing social-media blowback as a result. And she’s drawing on a growing body of important research by prominent scholars, including Ayanna Thompson, Kim F. Hall and Margo Hendricks.In a sweeping yet forensic 336 pages, “The Great White Bard” argues that “Shakespeare’s texts are a reservoir of what is known as race-making” — how language can define racial identity and establish hierarchy.The book details how racism plagues Shakespeare’s plays and Shakespeare scholarship. Both, Karim-Cooper contends, overtly and subtly elevate whiteness and denigrate Blackness, rendering true inclusion practically impossible. (Sexism and misogyny play a big part, too.)The result: Shakespeare for the few and not for the many.Yet Karim-Cooper is by no means offering up a luminary for cancellation. “To love Shakespeare means to know him,” she writes. “At some point love demands that we reconcile ourselves with flaws and limitations. Only then can there be a deeper understanding and affinity with another.”The book illuminates the numerous instances of racialized language in “Othello” (that “barbarous Moor”); “The Merchant of Venice” (Shylock described as “devil,” “wolf,” “dog” and “cur”); and “Titus Andronicus” (Aaron the Moor, also “barbarous”). Descriptions of interracial relationships in “Titus” and “Antony and Cleopatra,” Karim-Cooper argues, dehumanize Blackness and establish white supremacy.Her insights also reach into unexpected places, as when she finds sexual stereotyping of Black and dark women in the comedies “Much Ado About Nothing,” “Love’s Labour’s Lost” and “As You Like It.”The author’s analysis is both dizzying and impressive, yet at times overzealous. Some parsing of the texts feels narrow and binary, diminishing the scope and scale of their multiple meanings. Her carefully reasoned claim that words like “kindness” and “fair” are inherently connected only with whiteness runs the risk of hyperbole, in Shakespeare’s time or now. Surely the boogeyman can’t be everywhere.I have always found myself in Shakespeare, as if these works were written for me. I feel seen, heard and recreated by them. In playing many of his leading roles, I have found pure joy and pain, surrendering to the better and darker angels in myself. In some cosmic way, I believe these characters are as much drawn to me as I am to them.This is not to say that I haven’t had to come to terms with racism in the texts, from my first “Othello” in 1992 to my most recent turn as Shylock in 2022, with stints as Macbeth, Antony, Richard III and Prospero in between.Where I found racism, I also found complex characters who took my breath away with their great depth and astonishing humanity. Words, words, words: Shakespeare’s words contain multitudes of meaning, ideas and emotions that in my Black body become mutable and ancestral — shifting with time, intention, context, perception and culture.Every night after a “Hamlet” performance, as I headed home from the Delacorte, my grappling with “The Great White Bard” would resume. It has indeed exposed me to flaws and limitations, while also affirming Shakespeare’s power and abundance. Perhaps Karim-Cooper and I are after the same thing. I challenge some of her findings, but I respect her book and the alarm she sounds.“The Great White Bard” contributes to an essential discussion on Shakespeare and race, one that must include literary scholars, historians, etymologists, audiences and, yes, even actors. Let us all debate and think critically about the issues Karim-Cooper raises. At the end of the day, such tough love can guide us to truly love Shakespeare.John Douglas Thompson is a New York City actor who most recently played Claudius in “Hamlet” for Shakespeare in the Park.THE GREAT WHITE BARD: How to Love Shakespeare While Talking About Race | By Farah Karim-Cooper | Illustrated | 336 pp. | Viking | $30 More

    • 125 Shares129 Views

      in Theater

      Review: Young Bros and Maidens Harmonize in ‘Love’s Labor’s Lost’

      by

      This peculiar early Shakespeare comedy gets updated with 10 songs for a youthful alfresco production.“Let’s rock!” is something I’m pretty sure no character in Shakespeare ever said. But on a sandy stage under a jaunty tent, with a green hillside as a welcoming backdrop, it seemed an apt way to begin “Love’s Labor’s Lost.”It is, after all, a young man’s play, both in its authorship (Shakespeare was about 30) and story (four callow bros fall madly in love with four sharp maidens). And this production, directed by Amanda Dehnert for the Hudson Valley Shakespeare Festival, intensifies the youth-crush factor with 10 emo songs. Neither fully true to the strange original nor completely remade as a viable musical, it swings between those poles in ways that are both tiresome and charming.Let’s start with the charming: The catchy songs, by Dehnert and the Chicago-based composer André Pluess, tap the sappy heart of summer and are danceable to boot. (You may be the audience member asked at one point to prove it.) Whether folky or funky, and despite lyrics that sound little like Shakespeare — “she’s a nice girl, always thinking twice girl” — they match the story emotionally, with titles like “The Infinite Ones” (as youth always sees itself) and “Change to Black” (as youth at some point must do).That the songs don’t match the story structurally is probably an insuperable problem. “Love’s Labor’s Lost,” with or without the British “u,” is a very youthful, disjointed text, its thin thread of plot repeatedly cut by clowns, dullards, puns, pomposities and noodling that goes nowhere. Misdelivered letters and absurd disguises contribute. By the time you get to the masque near the end, featuring impenetrable spoofs of the nine classical “worthies,” you may doubt young Shakespeare’s judgment of worthiness.And yet his ear for the painful paradoxes of love is already fully in evidence. The four young men of Navarre, who form a “Seinfeld”-like pact to abjure the company of women for three years, break it almost instantly when a delegation of four visiting gentlewomen arrives from France to resolve a diplomatic issue. (After many readings and viewings of the play, I still don’t know what that issue is.) In supple pentameter, Shakespeare explores the difference between the book learning the young men meant to engage in and the learning that emerges, despite their plans, from “the prompting eyes of beauty’s tutors.”From left, Mayadevi Ross, Emily Ota, Antoinette Robinson and Phoebe Lloyd in the play, with music and lyrics by Amanda Dehnert and André Pluess.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesStill, theirs is a bumpy road to maturity. Spurred on by Berowne, “a man replete with mocks,” they double down on whimsy, dressing up for some reason as Russians to bamboozle their intendeds. (In Dehnert’s staging, the “Muscovites” are a rock group.) In response, the women, spurred on by Rosaline, whose eye “Jove’s lightning bears,” disguise themselves as one another to confuse and trump the men. But just as all of this gets sorted, with a quadruple marriage (or more) in sight, a last-minute death delays the nuptials and forestalls a normal resolution.“Our wooing doth not end like an old play,” Berowne says. “Jack hath not Jill” — which if true enough to life, is way too sudden for dramaturgy.The Hudson Valley Shakespeare production is not the first to struggle with such problems in musicalizing “Love’s Labor’s Lost.” But unlike the 1973 opera by Nicolas Nabokov, with a libretto by W.H. Auden and Chester Kallman, or the musical comedy presented by the Public Theater in 2013, with songs by Michael Friedman, Dehnert’s version does not use its songs to deepen character and propel the story.They are generally too short and atmospheric for that, most being sung between scenes instead of during them, and by members of the multitasking cast-slash-band (guitars, drums, accordion) who are observing the action, not experiencing it. The addition of songs, however beguiling, thus winds up emphasizing the play’s ungainliness by adding another unintegrated element and stretching the run time. A full-blown musical might have worked better, but at two hours and 40 minutes, it’s already too long for a summer romp.That’s a shame, because some of the singers — including Melissa Mahoney, who plays the “wench” Jaquenetta, and Luis Quintero, one of the dullards — have great voices. Others compare favorably only with the chorus of mosquitoes that always accompanies a Hudson Valley Shakespeare outing. But if discipline is not the top vocal note, rawness verging on excessiveness is a kind of authenticity in a show about raw, excessive youth.Authenticity is not sufficient when speaking the verse, though; it requires more finesse than some of the young actors yet possess. Getting your mouth around the overlapping and oddly shaped dialogue can be like eating an unpeeled pineapple.Luckily, Stephen Michael Spencer as Berowne and Antoinette Robinson as Rosaline are standouts, fully inhabiting the process of growing up and growing wise. At first almost adversaries — he impulsive and she haughty — they gradually move toward the middle as the invented trials of infatuation give way to the real ones of love. Both are also generally spared the over-emphatic jollity that Dehnert has evidently encouraged as a way of plowing through difficult passages of dialogue and forcing the weird jokes to bloom. It’s no fun when the people onstage are having more fun than you.Still, despite its lapses and longueurs, “Love’s Labor’s Lost” remains in this version a fascinating and feelingful taste of Shakespeare to come. And if in his later works he generally improved on many of the tricks pioneered here, that too is apt. Like those tricks, this musical, as it develops for future productions, may one day improve on its first, green outing.Love’s Labor’s LostThrough Aug. 27 at the Hudson Valley Shakespeare Festival, Garrison, N.Y.; hvshakespeare.org. Running time: 2 hours 40 minutes. More

    • 138 Shares199 Views

      in Television

      A Star of ‘Camelot’ Is Transmitting Shakespeare to the Next Generation

      by

      On a recent Wednesday, a dozen members of the cast of “Camelot” gathered in a circle in a rehearsal room in the basement of Lincoln Center Theater. Fergie Philippe, who plays Sir Sagramore and understudies as King Arthur, sat on a chair in the middle, staring quizzically at a sheet of paper with a monologue from Act V, Scene 1 of Shakespeare’s “Titus Andronicus.”Next to him stood Dakin Matthews, who plays both Merlyn and Pellinore, dressed in cargo shorts and a purple polo. As Philippe began speaking, Matthews squinted his eyes shut and silently mouthed the words.“Even now I curse the day——” Philippe said before he was quickly cut off by Matthews, who jabbed a finger in the air.“You went down on ‘day,’” Matthews said, referring to Philippe’s incorrect inflection.Over the next two hours, Matthews paced the room coaching the group through monologues from “Julius Caesar,” “Henry IV” and “Macbeth,” interrupting a performer to correct the pronunciation of “doth,” or to help find the “internal shape” in a text.“I feel like I’m a monk in a scriptorium keeping something alive,” Matthews said.Matthews, right, with Fergie Philippe, who plays Arthur in the Lincoln Center Theater production of the musical “Camelot,” practicing lines from “Titus Andronicus” between shows.Vincent Tullo for The New York TimesMatthews, an 82-year-old veteran of the theater, has performed in over 200 shows around the world — from Broadway to the Teatro Español in Madrid. His life has become inseparable from the stage: In addition to acting, he has directed, translated and written numerous plays of his own, many of which have been performed on the West Coast.But his colleagues know Matthews best as a maestro of the intricate world of Shakespearean drama, the man who can tell you exactly how to untangle a thorny text from “Henry IV.” And when he appears in shows, he often hosts workshops where younger members can learn Shakespeare.“There’s this complete understanding that there’s somebody in this room who has way more experience than us, who has put the work in, and on a different level performs at a caliber different than us,” Philippe said, “and we all agree and know and decide, ‘Yes, please teach us.’”Born in Oakland, Calif., in 1940, Matthews grew up surrounded by an extended Irish family. He was a sophomore at a Catholic high school when he was introduced to Shakespeare’s “Henry IV.”Wanting to enter the priesthood, he moved to Rome to continue his religious education.One summer in 1962, he traveled from Rome to Stratford, England, where he saw his first professional Shakespeare production. It was Peter Hall’s “A Midsummer Night’s Dream.” Matthews, 21 at the time, was transfixed.“I was like, ‘Oh my God,’” he recalled. “It was really like entering a portal, like entering a different world.”A seed was planted. “This is something one could actually do,” he realized.Back in Rome, he rallied the other priests-in-training, purchased costumes from a theater shop and directed two student plays, “Julius Caesar” and “Henry IV.”Matthews, center right, in the title role in a 1963 student production of Shakespeare’s “Julius Caesar.”via Dakin MatthewsMatthews returned to the Bay Area and later earned a master’s in English from East Bay, where he became a professor. While in graduate school, he won the role of Falstaff in “Henry IV” at the Marin Shakespeare Festival in 1965.For the next two decades, Matthews taught and rehearsed during the day, and starred in shows around the Bay Area at night, darting around in his green Volkswagen beetle. (He met his wife, Anne McNaughton, in 1967 at the Santa Clara Shakespeare Festival.)In 1990, he retired from teaching and moved to Los Angeles, where he continued working in theater and began performing in movies and TV, including “Down Home,” “Soul Man” and “The Jeff Foxworthy Show.”Matthews made his Broadway debut in 2003 in “Henry IV.” Ethan Hawke, who played Hotspur, remembered watching in awe as Matthews argued with Kevin Kline, who played Falstaff, over minutiae in the text.“It’s like listening to Thoreau and Emerson bicker about the state of mankind,” Hawke said. “It was life and death for them.”The earliest of Matthews’s Shakespeare workshops for fellow cast members was in 2001, for the actors in Peter Hall’s “Romeo and Juliet” in Los Angeles. He also held the classes for the Broadway production of “To Kill a Mockingbird” and has led them for the Actors Center in New York. As the July 23 closing night of “Camelot” approached, Matthews resumed the workshops.Philippe said learning from Matthews has made his “Camelot” performances more versatile.“It gave me the opportunity to play a bit more. I was able to find some new things in the character every night,” he said. “It just makes you a smarter actor.”Matthews has no plans to stop acting, but he said he has lost 20 pounds while performing in “Camelot” and has started to feel his age. His knees creak, and his voice can’t project as it once did.“For the first time it felt like work,” he said. “That’s the first time I’ve ever seriously thought about retiring.”For now, he plans to keep performing and to continue mentoring a younger generation of actors. “We’re bridging a gap, a chasm,” he said. “And someone’s got to keep something going somehow.” More

    • 150 Shares149 Views

      in Theater

      Review: This ‘Hamlet’ Under the Stars Is No Walk in the Park

      by

      The Public Theater’s alfresco production has plenty to offer audiences who know the play already. But it may not be so easy for newcomers.For those who remember the 2019 Shakespeare in the Park production of “Much Ado About Nothing” — as I do, fondly — the sight that awaits them at this summer’s “Hamlet” in the same location is disturbing.Entering the Delacorte Theater, you are immediately faced with what looks like a copy of the earlier show’s set, which depicted the handsome grounds of a grand home in a Black suburb of Atlanta. But now it is utterly ruined. The facade is atilt, the S.U.V. tipped nose-first in a puddle, the Stacey Abrams for President banner torn down and in tatters. The flagpole bearing the Stars and Stripes sticks out of the ground at a precipitous angle, like a javelin that made a bad landing.For the director Kenny Leon and the scenic designer Beowulf Boritt, both returning for this “Hamlet” — the Public Theater’s fifth in the park since 1964 and 13th overall — it’s a coup de théâtre, if an odd one. However smartly the setting provokes a shiver of dread in those who recognize it, and dread is certainly apt for a play in which nine of the main characters die, it can only produce a shrug from anyone else. An approach that had been designed to welcome audiences to a new way of looking at Shakespeare in 2019 now seems destined to exclude them.I’m afraid the same holds for the production overall: It is full of insight and echoes for those already in the know, and features lovely songs (by Jason Michael Webb) and a few fine performances that anyone can enjoy. (Ato Blankson-Wood brings a vivid anger to the title role.) But this “Hamlet” has been placed in a frame that doesn’t match what the production actually delivers, leaving me glad to have seen it but wishing for something more congruent.Part of the problem is that the frame — both Black and military as in Leon’s “Much Ado” — is so prominent at the start and irrelevant thereafter. Instead of beginning the play as written, with the ghost of Hamlet’s father, Leon stages his funeral as a prologue, with Marine Corps pallbearers, a praise team singing settings of Bible verses and Ophelia (Solea Pfeiffer) channeling Beyoncé.Only after this welcoming opening do we get the awful scenes in which the dead king, appearing to Hamlet, urges revenge on the brother who murdered him and then married his wife. As his giant funeral portrait comes to life through psychedelic special effects, Hamlet confusingly lip-syncs his beyond-the-grave voice, provided by Samuel L. Jackson in Darth Vader mode.But don’t be misled by that martial tone, any more than by the set, the Marines and the military cut of Jessica Jahn’s costumes for the men. (For the women they are colorful and gorgeous.) The war story they seem to promise is not in fact told in this production, as almost all the material concerning Denmark’s beef with Norway, and the consequent need to assure the royal succession, has been cut.Well, something had to be. Uncut, “Hamlet,” the longest of Shakespeare’s plays, would likely run more than four hours without an intermission; here it’s two hours and 45 minutes with one. How different directors make the trims is, in effect, their interpretation. Is the play a dysfunctional family melodrama? A moral inquiry into suicide and murder? A satire of royal courts and courtiers? All are in there.Leon focuses on the interior drama of Hamlet himself, inevitable when you cherry-pick the famous soliloquies. Blankson-Wood delivers them well, if not yet with the easeful expression that turns them into free-flowing thoughts-as-actions instead of words, words, words to be worked on.Still, because the soliloquies follow each other so closely, giving the staging the herky-jerky feeling of a musical without enough book, we get a clear sense of his Hamlet as someone whose interiority and sullenness precede the excuse of his father’s murder. You are not surprised when he turns Bad Boyfriend on Ophelia after (accidentally) killing her father. Ophelia herself is hoist with the same petard. Her descent into insanity, never clearly delineated in the text, is even more sudden with the cuts taken.Something similar happens to many of the other characters, like the interchangeably bro-y Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, who make a first impression then all but disappear. The Players are similarly reduced, their version of “The Mousetrap,” with which Hamlet intends to “catch the conscience of the king” now a mime show. And Horatio barely seems to show up in the first place, even though he’s the character Shakespeare leaves standing at the end: enjoined, as Hamlet says dying, to “tell my story.”The show recreates the set from the 2019 Shakespeare in the Park production of “Much Ado About Nothing,” which depicted the grounds of a home in a Black suburb of Atlanta, but now utterly ruined.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesIf that story is a bit foggy in this production, others are absolutely clear. As Claudius, John Douglas Thompson brings his usual grave authority to bear but also a fascinating note of insecurity that helps explain the character’s ruthlessness. Daniel Pearce makes of Polonius a hilariously pedantic desk jockey and bad idea bear. (The downside: You don’t mind when he gets knifed.) In Nick Rehberger’s rendering of Laertes, the character’s grief, fury and forgiveness all ring true, even though, as cut, they are nearly simultaneous.And Lorraine Toussaint is an exceptionally subtle, emotionally intelligent Gertrude, grieving her husband’s death but alert to the necessity of loving his killer. For me, she is the center of this production’s tragedy, giving fullest expression to Claudius’s observation that “When sorrows come, they come not single spies,/But in battalions.”That’s an unusual path to cut through the play, but having seen it so many times, I’m happy to go for a ride on its less-traveled roads. Throughout this production I heard arresting poetry I’d somehow missed before (“a pair of reechy kisses”) and saw old ideas revivified by bright new details. (When Polonius sends Laertes off with his tired advice, he also slips him an N95 mask, as other fathers might slip their child condoms.)Yet I worried that those less familiar with “Hamlet,” let alone those more invested in a traditional rendition, would be left unanchored on its heaving sea of meaning. Though performed, and often well, under the open sky of Central Park, its thoughts (as Claudius says) “never to heaven go.” They’re atilt like the house, and, like that javelin, too strangely angled.HamletThrough Aug. 6 at the Delacorte Theater, Manhattan; publictheater.org. Running time: 2 hours 45 minutes. More

    • 138 Shares199 Views

      in Theater

      Review: An All-Female ‘Richard III’ Makes for an Evening of Discontent

      by

      The New York Classical Theater adaptation, playing in New York’s city parks, feints toward novelty but offers little in the way of originality.The idea of an “all-female, gender-fluid, disability forward” staging of “Richard III” — as New York Classical Theater describes its new production of Shakespeare’s tragedy about the monstrously degenerate Plantagenet king — tantalizes. Will the protagonist, who loves to “descant on mine own deformity,” make us see anew the premium that society places on women’s appearances? Will the Duke of Gloucester be re-envisioned as a bloody-minded assassin like the bloody-minded Villanelle of “Killing Eve?” Will it force us to reckon with discrimination against the disabled in the royal court? As realized in this risk-shy adaptation directed by Stephen Burdman, the answer is none of the above.This “Richard III,” which plays in New York parks through July 9, feints toward novelty while offering little in the way of originality — the actors all inhabit the genders of their characters as originally conceived. The title role is played by Delaney Feener, a strong actor with a “limb difference,” as the press material takes care to note. But with her shortened right arm hidden beneath a cloak, Feener’s Richard does not immediately register as a “boar,” “bottled spider,” “foul-bunched toad” or any of the bestial lumps to which he is repeatedly compared by other characters. That can be a valid choice if explored thoughtfully, but even after Richard reveals that shortened arm to us and says he is “determined to prove a villain,” we gain little insight into his psychology; it’s unclear if this line is a boasting assertion of will or a victim’s lament.During the ambulatory adaptation, audience members pick up their own blankets or collapsible chairs and walk to different sections of the parks.Amir Hamja/The New York TimesWhile certain scenes are understandably curtailed or excised — a requirement in compressed versions even longer than this one’s two hours — the removal of Queen Margaret from a production starring women and gender-nonconforming actors is less forgivable. Though often seen as a peripheral character, she serves as a linchpin in the Wars of the Roses and appears in all of Shakespeare’s first series of history plays, her curses having the force of prophecy. Along with Queen Elizabeth (a regal Kristen Calgaro) and the Duchess of York (Pamela Sabaugh), Margaret traditionally forms a trinity of grieving women that usefully recalls the three Fates or Furies.This ambulatory adaptation, which requires audience members to pick up their own blankets or collapsible chairs and walk to different sections of the parks, also does not make for the most accessible production. A change of scenery sometimes proves dramatically fortuitous, as when a tree provides handy cover for one of many beheadings, but more often disrupts the momentum of proceedings. When Richard is finally unhorsed from power and swallowed into the night, we should feel relieved that his reign of terror has ended. But we don’t: The problem with this “Richard III” is that its villain is not a “boar” but a bore.Richard IIIThrough July 9 at various New York City parks; nyclassical.org. Running time: 2 hours.This review is supported by Critical Minded, an initiative to invest in the work of cultural critics from historically underrepresented backgrounds. More

    • 88 Shares129 Views

      in Theater

      ‘Romeo and Juliet’ Review: Toheeb Jimoh Shines

      by

      Toheeb Jimoh, Emmy-nominated for “Ted Lasso,” takes on Romeo in a riveting production from the British director Rebecca Frecknall.“Is love a tender thing?” Romeo asks early in the Shakespeare tragedy to which he and Juliet give their names. Not so much, according to the raw and riveting new production of “Romeo and Juliet” that opened Wednesday at the Almeida Theater here.It’s no surprise that the courtship between the noble Romeo — here played by the sweet-faced Toheeb Jimoh, from TV’s “Ted Lasso” — and the teenage Juliet will end in calamity. But this production from Rebecca Frecknall — the buzzy British director whose shows tend to scoop up Olivier awards — treats the often overly familiar play as if it were entirely fresh, and the result is astonishing.Filleting the text by nearly an hour so that it actually does equate to the Chorus’s promised “two hours’ traffic of our stage,” Frecknall brings to her first professional foray into Shakespeare the same pared-back, scalpel-sharp precision she has previously applied to Tennessee Williams and her still-running West End revival of “Cabaret,” which is rumored to be heading to New York next spring.Her “Romeo and Juliet,” performed without an intermission, begins with the cast clawing feverishly at a stage wall, onto which are projected crucial lines from the prologue. But as if in haste to get straight to the meat of the play, the wall soon collapses to reveal the citizenry of Verona mid-combat. Danger, you feel from the start, is the default mode of a contemporary-seeming milieu amid which Juliet is described by her father as “a stranger in the world.” That is perhaps because she hasn’t yet experienced life’s abrasions; such an awareness will come — and how — with time.“These violent delights have violent ends,” notes Friar Lawrence (the excellent Paul Higgins), in arguably the most prescient remark in the play. Barely have Romeo and Juliet been introduced before their existence seems threatened at every turn. At one point the Nurse (a booted Jo McInnes, herself a fine director) sits with her face in her hands, fearing the worst.Rebecca Frecknall, the play’s director, has a background in movement, and her “Romeo and Juliet” often feels halfway toward dance-theater.Marc BrennerElsewhere, Juliet’s father remarks to his daughter’s intended, Paris, that “we were born to die”— a comment that in this context has the force of prophecy. Jamie Ballard brings to Lord Capulet a roiling fury that seems to catch even his own wife off guard. What sort of father would deride his only child as “one too much?”Amid such a toxic family, you can well imagine Juliet wanting the quickest way out, and Frecknall makes us aware of how the play is alive to the passage of time. “Wednesday’s tomorrow,” the Friar says in passing, noting a remorseless speed that seems to take everyone by surprise. The Friar is equally alert to the danger inherent in such impetuosity: “They stumble that run fast,” he cautions as the lovers hurtle toward the abyss.Frecknall has a background in movement, and her “Romeo and Juliet” often feels halfway toward dance-theater, including generous borrowings from Prokofiev’s celebrated ballet score for this very play.A male ensemble, including key characters like Benvolio (Miles Barrow) and Jyuddah Jaymes’s feral Tybalt, moves in undulating rhythms, dropping to the floor of Chloe Lamford’s set and back up again. Jonathan Holby’s fight direction introduces a gun into the arsenal of knives that does away with Jack Riddiford’s charismatic Mercutio, here an insolent provocateur who has barely spoken the Queen Mab speech before he disappears. The rules governing this fearsome group of men render no one safe amid the comparably merciless glare of Lee Curran’s shifting bank of lights toward the rear of the stage.The fast-rising Jimoh, a 2022 Emmy nominee, brings to the stage the same ready likability familiar from his turn as Sam Obisanya in “Ted Lasso.” What astonishes here is the ease with which he emotionally opens himself up to Juliet, only to realize too late that the options available to this couple are running out. It’s fascinating, too, to see the balcony scene reconfigured so that Romeo is perched atop a ladder addressing Juliet center-stage, flipping the play’s iconic imagery.Jimoh brings the same ready likability to the stage that earned him an Emmy nomination last year for his role in the TV show “Ted Lasso.” Marc BrennerReferencing “this world-wearied flesh,” Jimoh’s Romeo sounds like an embryonic Hamlet. Hainsworth, for her part, played Hermia, a young lover with a similarly unforgiving father in the Bridge Theater’s “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” several years ago. Juliet is a far larger role, and the actress sometimes disappears so far inside her character’s grief that the language itself gets muddied, or lost. (Hainsworth will reunite with Frecknall in an adaptation of Federico García Lorca’s “The House of Bernarda Alba” for the National Theater in November.)But I’ve rarely heard an audience as attentive as the Almeida’s was when Hainsworth’s guttural sorrow gave way to a startlingly vivid suicide, from which several playgoers around me visibly recoiled.You may not be surprised to learn that Frecknall closes the play with Juliet’s despairing deed. Once you’ve restored death’s sting, all that’s left is silence.Romeo and JulietThrough July 29 at the Almeida Theater in London; https://almeida.co.uk/ More

    • 125 Shares149 Views

      in Theater

      Review: A ‘Romeo and Juliet’ That Clowns Around With Tragedy

      by

      Directed by Hansol Jung and Dustin Wills, this sportive, vividly acted production fails to make a convincing case for its new gags and directorial flights.“Romeo and Juliet” is at its core a cautionary tale of young love: Kiss a boy at a party one day, marry him the next, inside of a week you’re both dead. Of Shakespeare’s tragedies it is more propulsive than most, funnier and more modern, too, an amalgam of sex and death and a masquerade ball that requires little improvement. Cast a couple of charismatic leads, wind them up and let the bodies fall.That doesn’t mean that playwrights and directors shouldn’t interrogate or adapt the text. Of course they should. But what’s puzzling about the “Romeo and Juliet” presented by the National Asian American Theater Company in partnership with Two River Theater is how little any of that adaptation adds.Directed by Hansol Jung and Dustin Wills, who recently collaborated on “Wolf Play” at Soho Rep, and with what’s billed as a “modern verse translation” by Jung, this is a sportive, vividly acted production that fails to make a convincing case for its many directorial flights and vernacular interventions. Jung and Wills have thrown much spaghetti at the “Romeo and Juliet” wall. The result is a lot of noodling around.At 136 East 13th Street, usually the home of the Classic Stage Company, the set, designed by Junghyun Georgia Lee and lit by Joey Moro, is a wooden circle. This gestures toward the Elizabethan, as do Mariko Ohigashi’s costumes, which combine long skirts and slashed doublets with T-shirts and jeans.Jung’s script walks this same line between early modern and contemporary, leaving some tranches of the play intact, but zhuzhing up other parts with new vocabulary and new jokes. In the first scene, for example, the prologue is delivered more or less intact, minus a “doth” here and there. Yet the first line of dialogue is “I swear, man, we can’t be no one’s suckers,” which leads into some very filthy puns. (Are they bad puns? Yes. But so are Shakespeare’s.)Brian Lee Huynh as Capulet and Daniel Liu as Lady Capulet.Julieta CervantesJung’s interpolations are perhaps an improvement on the real first lines — an elaborate play on “collier” and “choler” — though specificity of acting and direction would have put the language across. And some of the substitutions, like “thrilled” for “proud,” are even less necessary. Still, Jung is savvy enough to respect Shakespeare’s rhythms and to match his word play, so there’s pleasure in seeing her lively mind volley with his.The acting, from Major Curda’s sad boy Romeo to Dorcas Leung’s sweetheart Juliet to Mia Katigbak’s warm, blunt Nurse, is uniformly strong. (Daniel Liu, playing a servant and Lady Capulet, is an actor to keep an eye on.) As actors of Asian descent don’t always get equal opportunities to play classical roles, this alone justifies the production. Jung and Wills’s direction doesn’t always serve them, though. It’s broad and busy, inclined toward clowning and with a habit of brazening out every sex joke. There are Brechtian gestures and live looping and Groucho Marx glasses and plastic fish littering the stage, which rob the story of momentum. Tybalt (Rob Kellogg), at one point, does the worm. Tragedy recedes.Yet if you are or can remember being young and possessed of big, ungovernable feelings, “Romeo and Juliet” won’t seem far away to you. Making the language and the dancing and the streetwear mirror our own time hasn’t brought it any closer.Romeo and JulietThrough June 3 at the Lynn F. Angelson Theater, Manhattan; naatco.org. Running time: 2 hours 35 minutes. More