Word: shakespeareã
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...song’s best for winter,” R&B queen Serena tells her young son in the American Repertory Theater’s “Best of Both Worlds,” the new gospel adaptation of Shakespeare??s “The Winter’s Tale” playing at the Loeb Drama Center through Jan. 3. Unfortunately, such sad songs are just about the only agreeable aspect of the show; to deem anything the “best” in this disappointingly mediocre production would be to issue a gross...
...been serving up some extremely unusual fare. Until November 15, this dingy little watering hole will be home to “The Taming of the Shrew,” the most recent production by the Actors’ Shakespeare Project. This fictional bar acts as the backdrop for Shakespeare??s famous battle of the sexes, directed by OBIE-award winner Melia Bensussen...
...with all this emphasis on themes of change, the end product somehow seems stagnant throughout most of the evening. Bensussen uses Shakespeare??s lesser-known induction to the play as a sort of meta-theatrical framing device. This prelude to the show drops us into a typical bar atmosphere, complete with pretzels. A drunk stumbles in off the street, and the staff of the Wild Cat decides to play a prank on him, invoking the help of a drunken entourage who are forced to act out a play as punishment for not paying their...
...scripts in hand, direction shouted at them mid-scene, and endearingly over-the-top line readings. Yet as the show progresses, the actors become more comfortable in their roles, and the production shifts from a clever tongue-in-cheek commentary on social performativity into a relatively normal presentation of Shakespeare??s play. The irony of this “Shrew” is that the better the acting gets, the worse the show becomes...
...conjure the ragged, gruff spirit of a bar, but it consistently fails to do so. In his introduction to the play, ASP Artistic Director Allyn Burrows invites the audience to “Get in, sit down, shut up, and hold on!” Yet even Kate, Shakespeare??s famous anti-heroine, feels oddly timid. Poorly executed fight choreography abounds, such as Kate’s unconvincing knee-to-the-crotch and the lame food fight which opens the second act. By that point, it feels as if the titular “shrew?...