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Druid Shakespeare
Death, in DRUID SHAKESPEARE: THE HISTORY PLAYS, is an invading parasite. Crosses accumulate on grave mounds like sprouts from bulbs, lives owed, as someone says, to God, payment, with interest, for birth in the world. The plays essayed by this Irish company are four in seven hours – the tetralogy of Richard II, Henry IV…
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The Princess of France
There is a type of film that tells a story from Shakespeare, with or without his language, that happens in a time and place that might be called “a world without Shakespeare.” A plot unfolds that is recognizable as that of a Shakespeare play. But, a funny thing about the unfolding: in a milieu that…
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Two Gentlemen of Verona
Sets and costumes are, when you get right down to it, a bit redundant if you are the Fiasco Theater. They are the quintessential troupe, pop-up players who could make do with the clothes they came in, the lines in their heads, and whatever is lying about to make a prop of. But, since they…
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Macbeth
When Malcolm says of Macbeth’s grief after the discovery of the murdered Duncan, “To show an unfelt sorrow is an office/Which the false man does easy,” it is in contravention to the late king’s lament on the execution of the traitorous Cawdor that “There’s no art/ To find the mind’s construction in the face.” No…
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Midsummer Night’s Dream
George Balanchine’s balletic rendering of A MIDSUMMER NIGHT’S DREAM (1962), in revival at the New York City Ballet, captures less the Shakespeare of the popular theater, and the modern nostalgia for it, than the Shakespeare of the court, the one associated with Blackfriars, Ben Jonson, and the masques of Inigo Jones. There is a great…
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Only Lovers Left Alive
I have never been so admiring of Jim Jarmusch as have his acolytes, but he seemed the perfect choice to direct a vampire movie and had the good taste to include a scene of Yasmine Hamdan singing in a café, so I was drawn without resistance to ONLY LOVERS LEFT ALIVE. There is a lot…
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King Lear
The art of the stage is largely one of clearing space, of getting impediments out of the way and avoiding the incursion of new ones, demarcating fields on which patterns of experience emerge through time, be they psychic, spiritual, or ideological. A new lushness can take root, or a greater austerity. Or both, as they…
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Measure for Measure
MEASURE FOR MEASURE is one of the more fascinating plays in the Shakespeare repertory, comedic in its structural attributes yet, it is thought, dark in tone, involving as it does an act of sexual blackmail to stop the execution of a young man for getting his girlfriend pregnant. But after seeing the Fiasco Theater’s rendition…
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King Lear
The end of the Chichester Festival Theatre’s KING LEAR tore my heart out and cast its remnants on a desolate plain. But I’ll get to that later. Up to then, Angus Jackson’s production, currently on loan to BAM, is refreshingly straightforward but somewhat nondescript; it tells the story, without dragging, but rises only occasionally to…
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Much Ado About Nothing
The Public Theater’s Mobile Shakespeare Unit performs in prisons, centers for youth at risk, and the like, as well as dropping in at home base to offer particularly low cost Shakespeare to the Public’s regular patrons. It was interesting to see the Unit’s version of MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING in a season during which there…