Simon Callow goes through the seven stages of Shakespeare in one-man show (photo by Stephanie Berger)
Brooklyn Academy of Music
BAM Harvey Theater
651 Fulton St. between Ashland & Rockwell Pl.
Through April 14, $25-$100
718-636-4100
www.bam.org
Obsessed with William Shakespeare since he was six years old, British actor Simon Callow, now sixty-two, is currently at BAM playing Hermione and Leontes from The Winter’s Tale, Mark Antony and Caesar from Julius Caesar, Jaques, Orlando, and Rosalind from As You Like It, Antipholus from The Comedy of Errors, Falstaff and Prince Henry from Henry IV, Prospero and Miranda from The Tempest, Quince, Flute, Bottom, and Puck from A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Kings Henry V, Richard II, and Lear (as well as Queen Margaret), both Romeo and Juliet, Macbeth, Old Hamlet, and even Shakespeare himself. And he does all that and more in a mere hour and a half in the one-man show Being Shakespeare, written by Bard scholar and Oxford English literature professor Jonathan Bate and directed and designed by Tom Cairns. Built around Jaques’s seven stages of man monologue from As You Like It — “All the world’s a stage / And all the men and women merely players / They have their exits and their entrances / And one man in his time plays many parts / His acts being seven ages” — Being Shakespeare follows the Bard from birth to death, with Callow (Shakespeare in Love, Four Weddings and a Funeral) discussing various aspects of Shakespeare’s personal life, about which precious little is known, and relating them to specific lines and characters from his plays and sonnets. Although there are a handful of Eureka! moments, there are also a lot of comparisons that are too much of a stretch, supposition instead of fact. Bate does include fascinating tidbits about Shakespeare’s sisters, working in his father’s glove-making shop, dealing with lawyers, and marrying the pregnant Anne Hathaway, but the show often feels more like a historical literary lecture than a dramatic play — and, of course, as Hamlet famously intoned, “The play’s the thing.” Callow does a magnificent job at some points, particularly his marvelously entertaining handling of an exchange between Falstaff and Prince Henry about preparing an army unit and the scene in which Peter Quince is casting Pyramus and Thisbe in Dream, but other snippets lack depth and power, perhaps better in idea than in execution. Being Shakespeare might be a treat for Shakespeare fanatics and completists, but it will leave others wanting more. Callow will participate in a postshow talk moderated by Jeff Dolven on April 12, and Bate will be in conversation with Barry Edelstein on April 15 in the BAM Hillman Attic Studio.