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

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      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

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      ‘Romeo and Juliet’ Review: Toheeb Jimoh Shines

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      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

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

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      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

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      Review: In ‘Hamnet,’ Shakespeare Becomes Soap Opera

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      The Royal Shakespeare Company adaptation of Maggie O’Farrell’s hit 2020 novel is elegant and tasteful — but also formulaic and sentimental.Writers of historical fiction are allowed to take liberties — they are in the business of filling in blanks, after all. But how much is too much? At what point does something become so speculative, its connection to the factual record so tenuous, that it ceases to be historically credible?At the Royal Shakespeare Company, just a few hundred yards from the site of William Shakespeare’s family home, a new play is turning an imaginative spotlight on the Bard’s domestic life. “Hamnet,” an adaptation of Maggie O’Farrell’s best-selling 2020 novel, portrays the vicissitudes of Shakespeare and his wife’s marriage, culminating in the death of the couple’s young son.Adapted for the stage by Lolita Chakrabarti — her recent adaptation of “The Life of Pi” is currently on Broadway — and directed by Erica Whyman, “Hamnet” runs at the Swan Theater, in Stratford-upon-Avon, England, through June 17, before transferring to London’s West End in the fall. The production is essentially a high-end, 16th-century soap opera, a delicately wrought portrait of a couple — their coming together, their travails and their sorrow — that carries an uplifting message about the generative power of grief. It could be completely inaccurate, but no one can disprove it.Shakespeare and Anne Hathaway married in 1582; he was 18, she was 26 and pregnant with the first of their three children. Two years later, they had twins, Judith and Hamnet; at age 11, Hamnet died of unknown causes. Beyond these bare facts, almost everything is conjecture.In this telling, Shakespeare’s wife — called Agnes Hathaway, rather than Anne — is a healer and a clairvoyant, the subject of “rumors of witchery.” She takes a chance on Shakespeare when he is a lowly Latin tutor with few prospects, and encourages him in his endeavors. When Hamnet dies of bubonic plague, his father falls into a writing frenzy — “Work holds me straight … it’s the only thing that’s real” — that culminates in his most famous play, “Hamlet.” The pain of the couple’s bereavement is thus transmuted into a timeless work of art — the ultimate tribute.Madeleine Mantock plays Agnes with a serene and stoical grace, while Tom Varey’s young Shakespeare is a feckless dreamer with plucky charm. (Later, when Shakespeare moves to London and makes his name, he is an altogether different presence — mature, understatedly commanding.) Mantock and Varey have a playful, tender onstage chemistry, and Ajani Cabey performs the title role with such a wide-eyed, fey energy that you almost forget he is much older than 11.It is Peter Wright and Elizabeth Rider, as Shakespeare’s parents, John and Mary, who get the best lines. Wright is grimly compelling as a boorish and sometimes violent oaf, and Rider is very funny as a cynical, matronly naysayer, perpetually exasperated by Agnes’s oddness. Mary’s frantic interventions, along with the droll repartee among Shakespeare’s troupe during the London scenes — in which the excellent Wright features again, as the Shakespearean comic actor Will Kempe — provide much-needed light relief.Ajani Cabey performs the role of Hamnet with a wide-eyed, fey energy.Manuel HarlanThe Stratford scenes play out before a large, A-shaped wooden structure that represents Shakespeare’s childhood home. The impressive design, by Tom Piper, comprises two very tall ladders, and its stroke is an elevated platform high above the stage that the characters can scurry up to. It’s a deft use of space, and pleasing on the eye — and, of course, the “A” stands for Agnes. Prema Mehta, the lighting designer, deploys fine mist to generate a hazy ambience that is complemented by mournfully evocative melodies on viol and lute, played by Alice Brown and Phill Ward; these instruments, musical mainstays in Shakespeare’s time, lend some period realism to the proceedings.The pacing, however, is a little uneven. Whereas the first half, which recounts the story of the couple’s relationship up until the birth of their twins, is told at a leisurely pace, Hamnet’s death, its aftermath, and the gestation of “Hamlet” are all crammed into the second half. One wonders if those latter segments, with their hallucinations and flashbacks, might be better suited to film. We’ll soon find out, because a big-screen adaptation, directed by Chloé Zhao and with O’Farrell as a co-writer, is in the pipeline.In interviews, O’Farrell has said she wanted to rescue Agnes and Hamnet from obscurity and redress unkind assumptions about the Shakespeares’ marriage: that it was a loveless arrangement, thrust upon the playwright by circumstances and endured grudgingly; that he was indifferent to his son’s death. This elegant production does justice to those aims — albeit with considerable creative license — but whether it does much else is questionable. The literary-historical context is essentially window dressing for a story that leans heavily into a fairly formulaic, heartstring-tugging sentimentalism and the relatable banalities of everyday life: hostile in-laws; a father and son at loggerheads; the demands of work impinging on domestic life. It happens to be the Shakespeares, but it could be anyone, really. This is tastefully crafted melodrama — but melodrama, nonetheless. More

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      In ‘Hamnet,’ Shakespeare’s Wife Takes the Stage, at Last

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      A Royal Shakespeare Company adaptation of Maggie O’Farrell’s hit novel gives voice and agency to a historical character we know little about.Of the numerous puzzles about William Shakespeare, those concerning his love life are the most tantalizing. Why did he marry a local woman, Anne Hathaway, have three children with her, then decamp to London for a life in the theater? What was their relationship really like? And why do we know so little about Anne herself, whom one scholar has called a “wife-shaped void” in the playwright’s story?This year, the 400th anniversary’s of Anne death, might be the year we finally hear about this other Shakespeare. A volume of celebratory poems, “Anne-thology,” is being published later this month. A small bust of her has been unveiled at Holy Trinity church in Stratford-upon-Avon, where her body has lain next to her husband’s since 1623. And, most strikingly, a Royal Shakespeare Company production devoted to her story opens next Wednesday at the company’s Swan Theater in the town.Tom Varey and Madeleine Mantock as William and Agnes, the characters based on Shakespeare and Hathaway.Manuel Harlan“It’s about time,” said Erica Whyman, the show’s director, in an interview after a recent rehearsal. “This is her town; she was born just outside Stratford and lived here all her life, as far as we know. She deserves to be back here.”The play, an adaptation of Maggie O’Farrell’s best-selling 2020 novel “Hamnet,” is named for the Shakespeares’ only son, who died at age 11 in 1596, for reasons unknown. His father apparently began work on the death-haunted “Hamlet” not long afterward, something that has driven biographers into frenzies of Freudian speculation.But in the script, which has been adapted by Lolita Chakrabarti, there is little doubt who is the star: Shakespeare’s wife, the mother of his children and the head of his household, who brims with spirit and practical intelligence, and runs rings around her partner and everyone else. In the play’s first scene, we see the 17-year-old William gawkily trying to woo her while she flies a pet hawk. (She, too, will never be tamed, we surmise.) Later, we see her industriously baking bread and mixing folk remedies while he dreams of poetry and the theater.Erica Whyman, who is directing “Hamnet,” is the acting artistic director of the Royal Shakespeare Company.Lauren Fleishman for The New York Times“She’s so alive,” said Madeleine Mantock, who plays the role based on Anne for the Royal Shakespeare Company. “She has all this knowledge, all this capability.”O’Farrell explained in a phone interview that she first encountered Shakespeare’s wife at college, after becoming curious about the playwright’s family — something historians have often neglected. “Shakespeare’s domestic life, if you want to call it that, just never came into the picture,” Anne least of all, she said. “And the more I read, the more derailed I was about her and the way she’s been treated. She’s been sidelined, in fact worse than sidelined — vilified.”Shakespeare was just 18 when he married Anne in 1582; she was 26 and pregnant. Historians have speculated that theirs was a shotgun wedding which Shakespeare entered into with gritted teeth. That he left Stratford-upon-Avon to begin his theatrical career after the birth of Hamnet and his twin sister, Judith, a few years later has added fuel to speculation that the Shakespeares had a loveless marriage. The playwright made only occasional treks back to his hometown until his last years. Signing his will with a shaking hand before his death in 1616, he left Anne his “second-best” bed — something that’s been interpreted as an insult. “Even among quite respected biographers, she’s cast as an illiterate, cradle-snatching peasant who lured this boy genius into marriage,” O’Farrell said. “But I couldn’t find a single shred of evidence for that.”Anne Hathaway’s Cottage, a former farmhouse in Stratford-upon-Avon, where Shakespeare’s wife grew up.Lauren Fleishman for The New York TimesThe town is on the river Avon, about 90 miles northwest of London.Lauren Fleishman for The New York TimesDepictions of Shakespeare characters on a wall in Stratford-upon-Avon. Each year, millions of tourists come to see the town where the playwright was born and died.Lauren Fleishman for The New York TimesThe fact that she’s most often referred to by her maiden name, “Hathaway,” speaks volumes, O’Farrell added. “It’s like we don’t want to let her near him.”And speaking of names, “Anne” might not even be the right one, O’Farrell said. In one surviving document, she referred to as “Agnes,” the form adopted in the novel and the play. “The fact that we’ve possibly been calling her by the wrong name for nearly 500 years seems completely symptomatic,” O’Farrell added.Paul Edmondson, the head of research at the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust, said that the story of Shakespeare’s wife was likely complex and compelling. While little evidence of her personality survives — we don’t even have a portrait — the facts we know point to a shrewd, capable woman who managed a large house, was responsible for significant amounts of money and land, and possibly ran a brewing business on the side. In addition, of course, she raised a family for a husband who was mostly away working, as many men in England were at the time.“She’s running the household, she’s a co-earner, and she’s also keeping an eye on his investments in the town. She was his equal in many ways,” Edmondson said.And that “second-best” bed? Edmondson said that it could have been the marriage bed, filled with intimate memories; its mention in the will “might also have been a legal understanding,” guaranteeing her residential rights after his death.In the novel, Anne/Agnes might not be able to write — women rarely received formal education at the time — but her husband does encourage her to read. And, crucially, William’s departure for London isn’t framed as abandonment, but his wife’s idea. “She realizes he needs more,” said Mantock, the actress. “She wants to encourage him to be who he needs to be.”Mantock and Ajani Cabey, as Hamnet. Background from left: Hannah McPake, Frankie Hastings and Elizabeth Rider.Manuel HarlanIn fact, it is only Hamnet’s untimely death that threatens to tear the couple apart; in the play, Agnes is left to pick up the pieces and hold the family together, while William escapes back to London and buries himself in work. It is only when Agnes attends an early performance of “Hamlet” that she realizes that he has transmuted his grief into drama.The novel’s success has had some real-life impacts in Stratford-upon-Avon, too. At Holy Trinity church, volunteers who tend to the Shakespeare family graves said that many more visitors now ask after her, as well as him. Last summer, O’Farrell presided over a ceremony for the planting of a pair of trees in the churchyard — one commemorating Hamnet, the other Judith.“I find that incredibly moving, actually,” O’Farrell said. “And the fact that she and the children are being brought to life onstage in the town.”For Mantock, simply being in Stratford, walking its streets and seeing the places that Anne knew was both poetic and potent, she said. “I know that what I’m doing is not real,” she added. “Of course I know that. But I feel there’s this real person there everywhere I go.”Mantock said playing her role in Anne Hathaway’s hometown was both poetic and potent.Lauren Fleishman for The New York TimesHamnetAt the Swan Theater, in Stratford-upon-Avon, England, through June 17, then at the Garrick Theater, in London, from Sept. 30 through Jan. 6; rsc.org. More

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      A Decidedly French “Hamlet” Returns to Paris

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      Starting in March, Ambroise Thomas’s version of the Shakespearean tragedy will be revived at the Opéra Bastille for the first time since 1938.Ambroise Thomas’s “Hamlet” had all the elements to become a blockbuster at the Paris Opera in the 19th century. With a gripping plot that unfolds over five acts, a leading baritone in the title role and innovative orchestration deploying newly invented instruments, the work had an enduring hold at the box office after its 1868 premiere.Like so many “grands opéras” that were born and bred for the company, “Hamlet” fell out of repertoire around the turn of the 20th century. Only since the 1980s has the work received a revival on stages worldwide. From March 11 to April 9, Thomas’s Shakespearean adaptation will return to the Paris Opera for the first time since 1938, in a new production directed by Krzysztof Warlikowski and starring Ludovic Tézier at the Opéra Bastille (a pre-opening for viewers under 28 takes place on March 8. Thomas Hengelbrock conducts).The company’s general director, Alexander Neef, has made it a goal to create a more specific identity for the Paris Opera by commissioning research and programming the French grand opera that once flourished there. Having experienced and admired a production of “Hamlet” at the Metropolitan Opera some 20 years ago, Mr. Neef said that the work “came up rather naturally” after his appointment.Mr. Tézier, whom he considers “not only the leading French baritone but maybe the leading baritone in his repertoire,” was also a natural choice. The singer, who is particularly coveted in the music of Verdi, in turn suggested Mr. Warlikowski as director following their collaboration on a 2017 production of Verdi’s “Don Carlos” at Opéra Bastille.For both lead performer and director, the production provides an opportunity to deepen their interpretation of a work that has played an important role in their respective careers. Mr. Tézier made debuts in both Toulouse, France, and Turin, Italy, in the title of role of Thomas’s “Hamlet” about two decades ago, while Mr. Warlikowski staged the original play by Shakespeare in Avignon, France in 2000 (he had first learned the drama as an apprentice of the late director Peter Brook in Paris).The director Krzysztof Warlikowski, who staged the original play by Shakespeare in 2000 in Avignon, France. “For me, the essential thing that clinches the drama is of course the apparition of the specter,” he said.Louisa Marie Summer for The New York TimesThis operatic version of “Hamlet” takes an unexpected turn before the curtain falls: The protagonist survives and is crowned king. The liberties taken by Thomas’s librettists, Michel Carré and Jules Barbier, met with criticism after the premiere; a Covent Garden version of the opera first mounted in 1869 restores the work’s original, more tragic ending.For Mr. Warlikowski, Thomas’s protagonist shares a great deal in common with the mythological figure of Orestes. “He also rebels against hypocrisy and the ills of this world,” he explained on a video call.The director will also hone in on the scenes in which the ghost of Hamlet’s father appears. “For me, the essential thing that clinches the drama is of course the apparition of the specter,” he said.Mr. Tézier noted that Thomas deployed some of his most dramatically effective music for the ghost by knowing how to pare down the orchestra. The baritone drew a parallel to another Shakespearean opera, Verdi’s “Macbeth,” and the title character’s hallucination of a dagger.“Thomas creates an atmosphere that is favorable to the text and the emotion of the moment,” he said by phone.The composer was exploring orchestral colors with new instruments by the musician and inventor Adolphe Sax at the same time as the composer Hector Berlioz, who held Thomas in great esteem. For example, the second-act banquet scene in which Hamlet accuses Claudius of murdering his father features a solo for alto saxophone. Thomas also wrote for bass saxhorn and six-keyed trombones.An ardent defender of French music against Germanic influence (specifically that of Wagner), Thomas in 1877 stated that every country “should stay faithful to its style and maintain its distinct character,” rather than submit “to the caprices of the time.” In a sign of his patriotism, he volunteered for the National Guard during the Franco-Prussian War before assuming the directorship of the Paris Conservatory in 1871.His “Hamlet” has been noted for its specifically French qualities. In addition to mitigating tragedy by allowing the protagonist to survive and avenge the death of his father, romantic intrigue and sensuous instrumentation often set the tone.Ludovic Tézier has a long history with Thomas’s “Hamlet,” having made debuts in Toulouse, France, and Turin, Italy in the title role. He noted that the work “allows the audience to spend a night in the opera in a state of suspense and meditation.”Jeff Pachoud/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesParis was at the time the center of classical musical life, not just in Europe but worldwide. “Hamlet” premiered at Salle Le Peletier, the same theater that mounted such works as Giacomo Meyerbeer’s “Robert le Diable” and Wagner’s “Tannhäuser” before Palais Garnier opened in 1875.The baritone Jean-Baptiste Faure, who was at the height of his fame, was captured in portrait as Hamlet by none other than Manet. The role of Ophélie, whose fourth-act mad scene helped ensure the work’s popularity, has also been an important role for sopranos from Christina Nilsson to Mary Garden (the new production stars Lisette Oropesa and, starting in April, Brenda Rae).But by 1891, Wagner’s “music of the future” became something of a game changer. “Lohengrin,” “Die Walküre” and “Tannhäuser” remained in repertoire at the Paris Opera through 1910, while of Meyerbeer’s four major operas, only “Les Huguenots” persisted.Mr. Warlikowski expressed his wish to champion “Hamlet” by “provoking questions and creating a spiritual journey through this timeless story.”Mr. Tézier emphasized that the work was not “second-rate.”“It most of all allows the audience to spend a night in the opera in a state of suspense and meditation,” he said.He compared the infrequent programming of such neglected classics to the unpredictable sightings of the Loch Ness monster: “There is no real explanation. But with each appearance of the monster, you have to see it because it’s a rarity. From the beginning to the end, something really happens in the music.” More

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      With an ‘Othello’ of His Own, Clint Dyer Comes Full Circle

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      LONDON — When Clint Dyer was an aspiring actor in the mid-1980s, he made his first visit to the National Theater, the revered London playhouse whose productions are a showcase for the great and good of British drama. “I’d never seen a stage that size,” Dyer recalled recently. “I’d never seen actors of that level. What a thing! How inspiring!”But when Dyer walked out of the auditorium after the show, he saw something that changed his mood instantly, he said: On a wall was a large photograph from a 1960s production of “Othello,” with the actor Laurence Olivier in the title role — in blackface. The sight “broke my heart,” Dyer said.Dyer, who is Black, said he grabbed a pen and wrote the words “Shame on you” in the whites of Olivier’s eyes.Almost four decades later, Britain’s theatrical landscape has changed radically. Last year, Dyer, 54, was named as the National Theater’s deputy artistic director — a position that makes him arguably the most high-profile person of color in British theater. On Wednesday, he premieres his own production of “Othello” at the playhouse.“It’s such a strange feeling that I’m in this building, directing the play that broke my heart,” Dyer said in an interview. “The beauty of that circle is almost overwhelming.”As the deputy artistic director of the National Theater, Dyer is arguably the most high-profile person of color in British theater.Adama Jalloh for The New York TimesThe National Theater rarely stages the lengthy “Othello,” but previous productions have been landmark events. Those include John Dexter’s 1964 production with Laurence Olivier (so revered that photographs from the show were still on display two decades later), Sam Mendes’s 1997 staging featuring David Harewood in the lead and Nicholas Hytner’s acclaimed 2013 production starring Adrian Lester as Shakespeare’s tragic hero, a Moor who murders his wife Desdemona after he is tricked into believing that she is having an affair.Dyer’s “Othello” — which sets the play in an arena populated by black-shirted thugs who seethe whenever Othello (Giles Terera) goes near his white wife (Rosy McEwen) — is highly anticipated, especially given that Dyer is the first Black director to tackle the play at the theater.During a recent rehearsal break, the director said he was hoping to do something new in this show. “As a Black man, I’ve always found productions problematic,” he said, adding that most directors play down the issue of race and focus on male jealousy, even when a Black actor takes the lead role. “The irony is,” Dyer said, “the way we’ve been performing ‘Othello’ has in some ways highlighted our racism more than the actual play.”Rosy McEwen as Desdemona and Giles Terera as Othello in the production by the National Theater, where Dyer is the first Black director to tackle the Shakespearean tragedy.Myah JeffersTo some theatergoers, Dyer’s rise to the heart of Britain’s theatrical establishment may appear swift. He was little known here until a play he directed and co-wrote, “Death of England,” opened in February 2020, just a few weeks before the coronavirus pandemic shuttered London’s playhouses. The play, about a working-class man coping with his conflicting feelings for his deceased father, was a critical hit for the National Theater.Yet for almost two decades, Dyer had been toiling away in London’s theater land. Born in 1968, he was brought up in Upton Park, a poor district of East London. His mother was a nurse, and his father worked at a Ford car factory. He wanted to be a soccer player, he said, but after acting in a school play, older schoolmates encouraged him to attend Saturday morning workshops at the Theater Royal Stratford East. Soon, he was acting in a play directed by Mike Leigh, and theater administrators pushed him to try his hand at writing and directing, too.In 2004, Philip Hedley, the theater’s artistic director at the time, asked Dyer to direct his first production, “The Big Life,” about four immigrants to Britain from the Caribbean who take a vow to avoid women and wine, but swiftly break it. Based on Shakespeare’s “Love’s Labour’s Lost,” the musical transferred to the West End, though Dyer struggled to get directing work afterward.Hedley said that race was “the only reason” Dyer’s career didn’t take off at the time. If he had been white, “he’d have been the hot property,” Hedley said. Dyer said he restarted his career by taking acting gigs, and writing and directing plays on the side. It was 15 years before he directed in the West End again, with “Get Up, Stand Up! The Bob Marley Musical.” He is now developing a Muhammad Ali musical for Broadway.“It’s such a strange feeling that I’m in this building, directing the play that broke my heart,” said Dyer. “The beauty of that circle is almost overwhelming.”Adama Jalloh for The New York TimesThere is curiosity in Britain’s theater world not just about Dyer’s “Othello,” but also about his plans as the National Theater’s deputy director. Dominic Cooke, a former artistic director of the Royal Court who is one of the National’s associate artists, said Dyer was chosen for the role partly because of his “really strong take on the politics of race.”The theater has long set targets to increase diversity on its stages, including one for 25 percent of performers to be people of color. (Last season it surpassed most of its objectives, with nonwhite artists making up 36 percent of its performers.) Dyer said “targets are valuable,” but it shouldn’t just fall to casting directors to increase diversity onstage. “We should really be going to writers,” Dyer said, adding that he wanted to ask playwrights to consider the diversity of their characters from the moment they began working on a play.Writers “should be doing the work to actually go out and learn about different cultures, different people and find the vernaculars that they speak in,” Dyer said.For all that focus on race, Dyer said his main responsibility as the National Theater’s deputy director was nothing to do with diversity, but simply “to sell tickets” — and that started with his “Othello.” For an artist of his generation, it felt like “a big deal” that a Black director was staging the play there, he said, but younger people might not see it as significant.That didn’t bother him, he said. “I’m glad they don’t think this is a big deal, as I do,” Dyer added. “Because they shouldn’t. It should be bloody normal.” More

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      How Female Playwrights Are Adapting, and Revamping, ‘Macbeth’

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      With “Macbeth” adaptations like “Peerless,” the inner lives of young women come into focus.When the playwright Jiehae Park was in high school, applying for college was a competitive sport. One of her friends, she recounted recently, applied to every Ivy League college and only got into one: the University of Pennsylvania. Instead of feeling joy, her friend started weeping, bemoaning what she considered to be the inferior Ivy. “Which is a bananas thing to say,” Park noted.For her part, Park went to Amherst, not an Ivy League school. But that high school experience stayed with her, becoming the inspiration for “Peerless,” a “Macbeth” adaptation about twin sisters who are so determined to get into an elite college that they resort to murder. This Primary Stages production, onstage at 59E59 Theaters through Sunday, follows the major plot points of “Macbeth,” but the setting and story couldn’t be more different: the cutthroat environment of college admissions among the students at a Midwestern high school.Each year brings new stagings of Shakespeare’s plays, but a few recent works, inspired by “Macbeth,” have stood out because they were written by female playwrights who refocused the story on the inner lives of young women. In addition to “Peerless,” there are Sophie McIntosh’s “Macbitches,” about a group of college students who backstab one another in order to get the lead role in a school play, and “Mac Beth,” by Erica Schmidt, who condensed the text to 90 minutes and set her work in an all-girls high school.In “Peerless,” ruthless competition and the toxicity of the model minority myth are among the issues addressed. The twins, who are Asian American, decide to kill the competition: the Native American and Black students they believe unfairly got their spots. This scenario speaks to the objections to affirmative action, making the play especially timely as the Supreme Court considers race-based college admissions. Alexis Soloski called it a “sly and polished adaptation” in her review for The Times.The sisters “are the logical result of the system,” Park said. “It’s so effective at setting up ways in which groups that have less power, but perhaps more power than another group that has even less power, will stand against those less powerful groups. But the people with the most power? They’re just chilling.”From left, Caroline Orlando, Morgan Lui, Natasja Naarendorp, Laura Clare Browne and Marie Dinolan in “Macbitches,” Sophie McIntosh’s riff on “Macbeth” that ran at the Chain Theater this summer.Wesley VolcyThe actor Sasha Diamond said starring in “Peerless” — and previously in “Teenage Dick,” Mike Lew’s adaptation of “Richard III” — has helped her to feel included in a part of the literary canon that she’s always felt excluded from. “The way that we are educated as Americans is with a Western European literary history,” said Diamond, who is Chinese and white. “The texts that we draw from and the things that we learn are not about us. And so when these playwrights adapt the stories that have been taught to us as ‘the canon,’” she said, and then make them specific to “our cultures or the world that we live in, it is a reclaiming. And it is empowering.”Revisiting the Tragedy of ‘Macbeth’Shakespeare’s tale of a man who, step by step, cedes his soul to his darkest impulses continues to inspire new interpretations.On Stage: Earlier this year, Daniel Craig and Ruth Negga starred in Sam Gold’s take on the play. Despite its star power, the production felt oddly uneasy, our critic wrote.Lady Macbeth: In Gold’s revival, Negga, who was nominated for a Tony Award, infused the character, and her marriage to Macbeth, with intensity, urgency and vitality.Onscreen: In the “Tragedy of Macbeth,” Joel Coen’s crackling adaptation of the Scottish Play, Denzel Washington and Frances McDormand embodied a toxic power couple with mastery.Break a Leg: Shakespeare’s play is known for the rituals and superstitions tied to it. How does the supernatural retain its hold on the theater world?Schmidt said the mixture of magic and murders most foul led her to write “Mac Beth,” which Red Bull Theater produced. “Macbeth,” she said, is “so satisfying, and it has so much dark comedy in it that people keep coming back to it.” (In her Times review, Laura Collins-Hughes remarked on the “unusual immediacy” of a production that made the characters “we know from ‘Macbeth’ legible in new ways.”)The playwrights all agreed that a woman’s perspective is a natural fit for Shakespeare’s play about power and corruption. After all, Lady Macbeth is arguably the more ruthless of the pair: she encourages Macbeth to murder the king. “Lady Macbeth is the most interesting person. She’s the best part of the play,” said Park, whose “Peerless” has been produced around the country since its 2015 premiere at Yale Repertory Theater.For McIntosh, whose “Macbitches” was presented at the Chain Theater in August, these retellings consider what ambition can look like in women. “Male ambition is almost universally respected to a certain extent,” McIntosh said. “With female ambition, there’s almost an expectation of pettiness to it. And the expectation of, ‘She doesn’t know what she’s getting herself into. She’s being needy. She’s being catty. She’s being selfish.’”These adaptations also embrace the violence of the source material. Macbeth kills the king, then his rivals, and a child. Eventually, Macbeth is also killed and Lady Macbeth commits suicide. Schmidt wanted to examine young people’s susceptibility to violence, and drew inspiration from school shootings and the so-called Slender Man stabbing in 2014 (the case in which two 12-year-old girls stabbed a classmate multiple times after luring her to a park). In “Mac Beth,” a group of teenage girls meet in a field to do their own version of “Macbeth.” What begins as playacting becomes more gruesome, with the girls eventually killing a schoolmate.“I feel that we all have this capacity within us for killing people, that this is part of our nature as humans,” said Schmidt, whose play has also been performed around the country. “And I think that it’s really difficult for people to accept that or to believe that or to see that in themselves. And so when you have all these school shootings, or you have young women behaving in this extremely violent way, suddenly it forces you to think about what’s happening in a different way.”Lily Santiago in Erica Schmidt’s “Mac Beth,” which had an acclaimed run at Red Bull Theater in 2019.Richard Termine for The New York TimesWith “Macbitches,” McIntosh, a graduate of the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point, wanted to deliver contemporary social commentary, citing the toxic power dynamics she said she witnessed between students and faculty members at the college. As she met other young artists after graduating, she said, “I was really surprised to hear that so many of their experiences paralleled ours so closely.”In her riff on “Macbeth,” McIntosh dispenses with plot points, instead evoking similar themes — abuse of power and the price of ambition. A group of young women audition for a college production of “Macbeth,” but when the freshman gets the coveted role of Lady Macbeth, the others become jealous. As the play escalates toward violence, it is clear that something is rotten in the state of the drama program, with abuses of power on the part of the faculty.It’s “Macbeth” by way of #MeToo. And Juan A. Ramírez, in his Times review, commended it for juggling “headier themes while remaining a lively college drama.” McIntosh, who served as dramaturge for a college production of “Macbeth,” said she wanted to highlight how ambition in the entertainment industry can be used to excuse all kinds of misbehavior. She also wanted to call out the sentiment that “art has to be suffering,” she said. “If you defy that, it means that you’re not a good actor, you don’t have what it takes, you’re not committed to the craft.”These reimagined productions of Shakespeare haven’t come without criticism, though. During a production of “Mac Beth” in Seattle, Schmidt recalls audience members laughing at the actresses playing male characters. “Another source of criticism was like, ‘Why isn’t there something explaining to us why they’re doing the play?’” Schmidt said, which to her feels like a “devaluing of the teenage voice, or the young woman.”Park said some audience members have issues with her protagonists being young Asian American women, and of her portrayal of Asian Americans who are unapologetically villainous. “It’s so tied up in the model minority expectation, of who’s allowed to be anything other than perfect,” she said. “It’s a legit question of, are we at the point culturally where there’s space for more complex representations? I hope so.” More