Tag Archives: william shakespeare

SHAKESPEARE IN THE PARK: AS YOU LIKE IT

Andre Braugher’s dual performance as dueling dukes is one of the highlights of AS YOU LIKE IT (photo by Joan Marcus)

Central Park
Delacorte Theater
Through June 30 (no show June 24), free, 8:00
shakespeareinthepark.org

Fifty years ago this week, the Delacorte Theater in Central Park opened with a production of The Merchant of Venice directed by Joe Papp and Gladys Vaughan and starring George C. Scott as Shylock, followed by The Tempest, with Paul Stevens as Prospero and James Earl Jones as Caliban, directed by Gerald Freedman. Since that time, Shakespeare in the Park has been home to more than 150 shows with all-star casts that have been seen by more than five million people. The Delacorte’s golden anniversary season began June 5 with the Bard’s mistaken-identity romantic comedy As You Like It, directed by Public Theater veteran Daniel Sullivan. The story has been shifted to the antebellum South of the 1840s, where Duke Frederick (an excellent Andre Braugher) has been running rampant, exiling people he feels are not loyal to him and threaten his rule, including his older brother, Duke Senior (a fine Braugher again), Senior’s daughter, Rosalind (Lily Rabe), and Orlando (David Furr), a local man who has been mistreated by his older brother, Oliver (Omar Metwally), and had the audacity to beat Frederick’s champion wrestler (Brendan Averett). Disguised as a boy named Ganymede, Rosalind decides to seek out her father in the Forest of Arden, joined on the dangerous journey by her best friend, Celia (Renee Elise Goldsberry), Frederick’s daughter, and Touchstone (Oliver Platt), the court fool. Meanwhile, Orlando is determined to find Rosalind and declare his undying love for her. Sullivan has transformed the eminently likable As You Like It into a somewhat old-fashioned piece of Americana, complete with a four-piece folk-bluegrass band led by banjo favorite Tony Trischka playing songs written by Steve Martin. The first half is indeed very funny and engaging, highlighted by the foot-stomping music and John Lee Beatty’s set, a tall wooden fort that opens up into the dense green Forest of Arden, incorporating Central Park’s real trees. Sullivan adds small touches outside of the script, little flourishes of eye contact and physical shtick that bring playful life to the familiar tale.

Stephen Spinella declares that “all the world’s a stage” in uneven Central Park production (photo by Joan Marcus)

But after intermission, things devolve quickly, as Rabe’s Rosalind turns annoying and obnoxious, Furr’s Orlando becomes silly and overwrought, and the side-plot relationships between Touchstone and busty local lass Audrey (Donna Lynne Champlin) and young Silvius (Will Rogers) and Phoebe (Susannah Flood) seem superfluous at best. Even the music starts feeling repetitive and unnecessary. In the play’s most famous speech, clumsily delivered by an otherwise solid Stephen Spinella as Jaques, Senior’s cynical attendant goes through the seven stages of man, explaining, “All the world’s a stage / And all the men and women merely players. . . . Last scene of all / That ends this strange eventful history, / Is second childishness and mere oblivion, / Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything.” He could just as well be describing the interminable second act of this well-meaning but ultimately disappointing production. As You Like It runs through June 30, followed July 23 – August 25 by Stephen Sondheim’s Into the Woods, starring Amy Adams, Donna Murphy, Denis O’Hare, and Gideon Glick. Don’t forget that in addition to waiting on line at the Delacorte to get free tickets, you can also enter the daily virtual ticketing lottery online here.

THE BRIDGE PROJECT: RICHARD III

Kevin Spacey stars as the iconic Shakespearean king at BAM in final production of the Bridge Project (photo by Manuel Harlan)

Brooklyn Academy of Music
BAM Harvey Theater
651 Fulton St. between Ashland & Rockwell Pl.
Through March 4, $30-$135
718-636-4100
www.bam.org

As the audience enter BAM’s Harvey Theater for the Bridge Project production of Richard III, the word Now is glowing on a makeshift curtain, announcing not only the first word of the concluding work in Shakespeare’s War of the Roses tetralogy but the time in which the play takes place. When the curtain rises, Richard, the Duke of Gloucester, is sitting in a chair, a flat-screen video monitor behind him showing his brother, King Edward IV (Andrew Long), as Kevin Spacey intones those famous lines, “Now is the winter of our discontent / Made glorious summer by this sun of York; / And all the clouds that lour’d upon our house / In the deep bosom of the ocean buried.” The technology at the opening might indicate the play is set in the modern day, but the rest of this version of Richard III, a coproduction of BAM, Sam Mendes’s Neal Street Productions, and the Old Vic, headed by Spacey, is a timeless story of the intense desire for power. Taking on the iconic role previously played onstage by the likes of John Barrymore, Alec Guinness, Ian McKellen, Kenneth Branagh, and Al Pacino and, most famously, on film by Laurence Olivier, Spacey is delightfully devilish as he orchestrates the murder of anyone and everyone who stands in the way of his ascent to the throne of England.

Richard (Kevin Spacey) woos the just-widowed Lady Anne (Annabel Scholey) in Sam Mendes’s RICHARD III (photo by Joan Marcus)

Spacey, walking with a limp that is part Porgy, part Roger “Verbal” Kint (his character in The Usual Suspects), regularly turns to the audience and makes funny faces and gestures, mugging with a wicked sense of humor as he lasciviously betrays his brother Clarence (Chandler Williams), Queen Elizabeth (Haydn Gwynne), the Duke of Buckingham (Chuk Iwuji), and even his own mother, the Duchess of York (Maureen Anderman). In one of the play’s most potent scenes, the hunchbacked Richard woos Lady Anne (Annabel Scholey), even as her husband, the Prince of Wales, lies on his back murdered, blood still oozing out of his body. Tom Piper’s set is a three-sided whitewashed wall of eighteen doors through which characters enter and leave; in the shorter second act, the stage opens up into a long, narrowing pathway that seems to go on forever, particularly effective during the battle scene; the Harvey bursts with energy when Richard, dressed like a crazed dictator, marches his way from the back, pounding his cane like a royal scepter. Spacey, who cut his Gloucester teeth playing Buckingham in Al Pacino’s Looking for Richard, a thorough examination of the work viewed from numerous angles, does at times get a little too cutesy, and several of the actors in minor roles deliver stilted lines, but director Mendes — the two previously teamed up on the Oscar-winning American Beauty — does a good job keeping the delicious story centered and focused. The final production of the Bridge Project, which in past years combined American and British actors in The Winter’s Tale, The Tempest, As You Like It, and Tom Stoppard’s adaptation of The Cherry Orchard, this version of Richard III is fun and fanciful, funny and frightening, a fitting finale to this unique three-year collaboration.

THE BRIDGE PROJECT: RICHARD III

Kevin Spacey stars as the iconic Shakespearean king at BAM in final production of the Bridge Project (photo by Manuel Harlan)

Brooklyn Academy of Music
BAM Harvey Theater
651 Fulton St. between Ashland & Rockwell Pl.
Through March 4, $30-$135
718-636-4100
www.bam.org

Three years ago, BAM began the Bridge Project, a partnership with Sam Mendes’s Neal Street Productions and the Old Vic, headed by Kevin Spacey, staging The Winter’s Tale and Tom Stoppard’s adaptation of The Cherry Orchard in 2009 and The Tempest and As You Like It in 2010. After taking last year off, the project concludes with Richard III, directed by Mendes and starring Spacey as the iconic Shakespearean king notably played previously by such stalwarts as Laurence Olivier, Ian McKellen, John Barrymore, Kenneth Branagh, Alec Guinness, Ian Holm, and Al Pacino. As part of the initiative, the three-hour play, which runs at BAM’s Harvey Theater through March 4, features a cast of both American and British actors, including Simon Lee Phillips, Hannah Stokely, Jack Ellis, Gemma Jones, Stephen Lee Anderson, Katherine Manners, and others bridging the Atlantic.

KING LEAR

Derek Jacobi is finally ready to play the lead role in KING LEAR, now at BAM (photo by Johan Persson)

Brooklyn Academy of Music
BAM Harvey Theater
651 Fulton St.
Through June 5, $25-$95 (limited availability)
718-636-4100
www.bam.org

Some of the best theater to be found in New York City in 2011 has been happening in Brooklyn, where BAM’s spring season has included the Abbey Theatre’s production of Henrik Ibsen’s John Gabriel Borkman and Geoffrey Rush in the Belvoir St Theatre presentation of Nikolai Gogol’s Diary of a Madman. The magic continues with the Donmar Warehouse’s take on one of William Shakespeare’s greatest tragedies, King Lear, which runs through June 5 at the Harvey Theater. In September 2007, BAM presented the Royal Shakespeare Company’s production of Lear, starring Ian McKellen and directed by Trevor Nunn; this time around, Sir Derek Jacobi plays the aging, enfeebled king, directed by Michael Grandage. This more stripped-down interpretation focuses on the powerful emotions experienced by the two fathers, Lear and the Earl of Gloucester (Paul Jesson). After being lavished with empty praise from daughters Goneril (Gina McKee) and Regan (Justine Mitchell), Lear is furious that his youngest and favorite child, Cordelia (Pippa Bennett-Warner), does not similarly overstate her affections. Jacobi’s whole head flushes red as if on fire as Lear disowns Cordelia, then banishes the loyal Earl of Kent (Michael Hadley) for defending her. Meanwhile, Gloucester is being deceived by one son, Edmund (Alec Newman), into thinking that the other, Edgar (Gwilym Lee), is plotting against them. Thus, brother conspires against brother, sister conspires against sister, and children conspire against parents as two once-noble families disintegrate into treachery that leads to acts of severe violence. Jacobi — who has been waiting ten years to appear in the part and finally felt he was of the proper age (seventy-two) and experience to portray Lear — is a controlled ball of rage as the deeply flawed king, explosive in one scene, tortured and meek the next. The rest of the cast is solid, particularly Jesson as the doomed Gloucester and Lee as his wrongly accused eldest son, who disguises himself later as the forest madman Poor Tom. (Newman, however, chews too much scenery as Edmund.) Christopher Oram’s costume and set design nearly steal the show; virtually all of the characters are dressed in black, presenting a stark contrast to the stage, composed of long, fading whitewashed boards that emphasize the physical and psychological destruction to come and is especially effective in a smoke-laden lightning storm (courtesy of Neil Austin and Adam Cork) that sends shock waves through the Harvey. Grandage does threaten to go a bit avant-garde and over the top after intermission, but he brings it back around to a more traditional narrative for the heartbreaking finale to yet another memorable Lear, with another memorable lead performance. (There will be an Artist Talk with members of the cast following the May 12 show, and Shakespearean scholar and author Stephen Greenblatt will give a talk on Lear on May 15 at BAmcafé. Interestingly, Jacobi — who chooses to leave his clothes on in one critical scene, as opposed to McKellen, who bared all back in 2007 — has been outspoken in his belief that the Bard did not actually write any of the plays he is credited with.)

TAIWAN STORIES: CLASSIC AND CONTEMPORARY FILM FROM TAIWAN — JULIETS

Unrequited love is at the center of three very different tales in the cinematic omnibus JULIETS

JULIETS (Hou Chi-Jan, Shen Ko-Shang & Hou Chi Jan, 2010)
Film Society of Lincoln Center
Walter Reade Theater
165 West 65th St.
Saturday, May 7, 1:30, and Wednesday, May 18, 4:00
Series runs May 6-19
212-875-5610
www.filmlinc.com

The opening-night selection of the Golden Horse Film Festival, Juliets is a three-part anthology that offers unique takes on Shakespeare’s classic story of unrequited love, Romeo & Juliet. In Chen Yu-Hsun’s Juliet’s Choice, Vivian Hsu stars as Ju, a mousy, handicapped young woman who walks with one crutch — not very well — and toils in her father’s printing shop. Ju is immediately struck by Ro (Wang Po-chieh), a university student who is trying to get someone to print a Marxist pamphlet, not exactly the safest idea in 1970s Taipei, which is under martial law. Although Ju’s father rejects Ro’s proposition, fearing the authorities, she goes ahead with the project in secret, leading to personal, professional, and political repercussions and a sly twist. In Shen Ko-Shang’s Two Juliets, One Million Star finalist Lee Chien-na was named Best New Performer at the 2010 Golden Horse Film Awards for her role as Julie, a sexy chanteuse in a traveling outdoor burlesque show who gets into trouble when her relationship with the puppeteer’s son (River Huang) suddenly goes public, causing fighting among the families. The story is actually told in flashback through the eyes of the man thirty years later and the woman taxi driver (Hsu) who wants to help him make amends. And in Hou Chi-Jan’s One More Juliet, Hong Kong television star Kang Kang plays Ju Li-ye, a despondent thirty-nine-year-old who has just had his heart broken for the twenty-eighth and, he’s decided, last time. But just as he’s about to hang himself from a tree using the chain from his broken bicycle, he is asked to appear in a commercial that his being shot nearby. As the goofy ad for sculpted superhero undies is delayed by the rain, Ju hears a stirring tale told by another actor, Ron (Liang He Chun), bringing the two men closer together. Juliets offers three very different tales of unrequited love, set in three different times and in three different genres, yet they work well as a whole, displaying the main characters’ desperation, disappointment, and determination as they try to deal with the rough hand love has dealt them.

Juliets is screening May 7 & 18 as part of the Film Society of Lincoln Center’s “Taiwan Stories: Classic and Contemporary Film from Taiwan,” which runs May 6-20 and also includes such older works as Liang Zhefu’s Early Train from Taipei (1964), Li Hanxiang’s Beauty of Beauties (1965), and King Hu’s A Touch of Zen (1969) as well as such modern films as Wei Tei-Sheng’s Cape No. 7 (2008), Chen Wen-tang’s Tears (2009), and Chung Mong-Hong’s The Fourth Portrait (2010).

RADIO MACBETH

SITI company’s unique take on the Bard runs at DTW through October 16

Dance Theater Workshop
219 West 19th St. between Seventh & Eighth Aves.
Through October 16, $35, 7:00 (both shows $50 on Friday and Saturday nights)
212-924-0077
www.dtw.org
www.siti.org

Using Orson Welles’s edited radio script of MACBETH, directors Anne Bogart and Darron L West lead SITI Company on an eerie but engaging retelling of one of the Bard’s most haunted works. On a relatively sparse stage, a group of actors gather to rehearse a radio production of MACBETH. The performers and the chairs and tables move about as the troupe recites this abbreviated tale of Macbeth’s treacherous rise to power in Scotland. Not a word is spoken that is not from the original Shakespeare text, but as the familiar story unfolds, Bogart and West reveal aspects of the performers’ characters and relationships, creating a play within the play. Tension builds as Will Bond (Duncan, Macduff, Murderer, Doctor) expresses his displeasure that his wife (Ellen Lauren as Lady Macbeth) and the company lead (Stephen Duff Webber as Macbeth and Orson Welles) carry on an affair in full view of everyone. Things are continually going bump in the night as ladders fall and the Witch (Kelly Maurer) loudly bangs on a table with a piece of wood, bringing to the foreground the kind of sound effects used in radio’s heyday.

Bogart, SITI’s artistic director, and West, an award-winning sound designer, include inventive visual stimuli so it is not just a bunch of people sitting around reading from a script; at one point, the players line up chairs in the middle of the stage, and the actors sit down to depict the chain of succession leading to Macbeth’s becoming king. RADIO MACBETH runs through October 16 at Dance Theater Workshop, but as an added treat, the company will also present WAR OF THE WORLDS — THE RADIO PLAY, SITI’s unique staging of Welles’s classic 1938 broadcast, as part of a double feature on Friday and Saturday nights. The two shows have never been performed together; by putting them back-to-back, Bogart and West reveal how they developed RADIO MACBETH: It is as if the MACBETH rehearsal actually takes place immediately following the troupe’s on-air production of Howard Koch’s adaptation of the H. G. Welles thriller, adding more depth to the characters and also explaining why they seem so exhausted when they first take the stage in RADIO MACBETH.

TWI-NY TALK: JON STEWART AND STEPHEN COLBERT

Jon Stewart will get out from behind his desk to star in summer Shakespeare production with Stephen Colbert

THE TWO GENTLEMEN OF VERONA
The Daily Show Studios
733 Eleventh Ave. between 51st & 52nd Sts.
July 9-31, free, 8:00
www.thedailyshow.com
www.colbertnation.com

Every Monday through Thursday, Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert go back to back, taking on politics and more in their hugely successful Comedy Central programs THE DAILY SHOW and THE COLBERT REPORT. They usually have weekends off, but this summer they will turn Stewart’s Hell’s Kitchen studio into the Globe Theatre as they team up for what promises to be a very different kind of Shakespeare experience.

On Friday and Saturday nights from July 9 through July 31, Emmy winners Stewart and Colbert will star in THE TWO GENTLEMEN OF VERONA, rotating in the lead roles of Valentine and Proteus. They will be joined by Samantha Bee as Silvia, Kristen Schaal as Julia, Jason Jones as the Duke of Milan, John Hodgman as Antonio, Wyatt Cenac as Thurio, Lewis Black as Speed, Aasif Mandvi as Eglamour, and John Oliver as Lucetta. It is a bold undertaking for the close-knit team, who are as friendly off camera as they are on.

Stewart and Colbert recently sat down with twi-ny in our Murray Hill offices to discuss just what makes them think they can pull this off.

twi-ny: Of all the Shakespeare plays you could have chosen, why do THE TWO GENTLEMEN OF VERONA?

Stephen Colbert: It was really my idea. It’s one of Willie’s earliest plays, maybe his first, and it’s not very good. This way if we suck, we can blame him.

Jon Stewart: I think it’s actually a cry from Stephen that he’s always wanted the eleven o’clock spot ahead of me. By switching roles with me, he gets to pretend it’s like we’re switching our time slots.

Stephen Colbert will show his acting chops this summer in Bard play

twi-ny: Only a few members of the cast have had any acting roles, primarily small parts in modern-day lowbrow comedies. Do you think that could be a problem?

SC: Did anyone know Kevin Kline, Meryl Streep, Al Pacino, or any of those other “Hollywood types” when they first did Shakespeare in the Park? I think the only thing on Pacino’s resume was playing the old guy in those Pepperidge Farm commercials.

JS: Actually, Stephen, they were all pretty famous already, and had done a lot of Broadway and movies.

SC: I rest my case.

twi-ny: What do you hope to gain by this experience?

SC: Well, I’ve won a Grammy, an Emmy, and a Peabody, so I’m going for a Tony this time.

JS: Um, Stephen, we won’t be eligible for the Tonys.

SC: [pauses] Oh, then, money.

JS: We’re not charging admission, Stephen.

SC: It’s free?

JS: Yes, it’s free. Don’t you remember we discussed this?

SC: Yeah, but I didn’t think you were serious. [looks around] Can someone get my agent on the phone?

In addition to continuing their television series and appearing in THE TWO GENTLEMEN OF VERONA, Stephen Colbert and Jon Stewart are currently preparing for the big-screen remake of the 1969 film THE APRIL FOOLS, playing the roles of Jack Lemmon and Catherine Deneuve, respectively.