Forget Broadway -- there's first rate, very well-produced, well-directed and acted Shakespeare in this city CONSTANTLY.
Because of the commercial demands of Broadway that requires star casting, 9 times out of ten Broadway Shakespeare is pretty mediocre (the exceptions being Lincoln Center's Henry IV by Jack O'Brien with Kevin Kline as Falstaff a few season back; Lincoln Center's Lear with Plummer was rather provincial, the Denzel Washington Caesar was somewhat disjointed). "Broadway" has nothing whatsoever to do with quality (ESPECIALLY when it comes to the classics) -- it just means that some producer thinks a given production might attract a large enough audience to fill 1000 seat theatre 8 times a week.
The Public Theatre (subtitled The New York Shakespeare Festival) is dedicated to producing a certain amount of Shakespeare on an annual basis. They're doing that Macbeth in the Park with Schreiber and Jennifer Ehle this summer and in just the last couple of seasons have done Richard III, Two Noble Kinsmen, Measure for Measure, As You Like It, Much Ado About Nothing, and Winter's Tale (as well as the musical version of Two Gentlemen of Verona).
BAM hosts some of the finest international companies annually and notably brought over Edward Hall's Propeller Theatre for the last two years with acclaimed, award-winning productions of Midsummer Night's Dream (one of the best productions of a classic I've ever seen) and A Winter's Tale. Hall's "Rose Rage" (a two part, four and a half hour reduction of the Henry VI plays) had a highly acclaimed run at the Duke last year and wound up on several top ten lists (including mine).
Just in the past two months, Theatre for a New Audience at the Duke produced a truly outstanding production of All's Well That Ends Well that received across the board raves and is one of the highlights of the theatre season so far. And there are good productions of Measure for Measure and Merchant of Venice (by the American Globe Theatre) closing this weekend.
In the past year, there have been excellent productions of Pericles, Cymbeline, and Corialanus from various Off-Broadway companies. Every single Shakespeare play gets a professional production somewhere in the city at least every two or three years (and some plays like Hamlet, Measure for Measure and Twelfth Night have been known to get two or three productions in a single year).
There's a lot of good Shakespeare in this city all the time (dozens in summer). If you want to see quality Shakespeare, don't sit around waiting for another lame Broadway revival -- go out and look for it.
"What a story........ everything but the bloodhounds snappin' at her rear end." -- Birdie
[http://margochanning.broadwayworld.com/]
"The Devil Be Hittin' Me" -- Whitney
Updated On: 4/9/06 at 02:19 PM