William Shakespeare Archives

A young Latinx woman in white robe and blue shawl covering her head kneels center stage. On her right, slightly in the shadows, is an older white man in a monk's robe.

You say you want a revolution?

by Kerry Reid November 3, 2022November 4, 2022

When it comes to bold and audacious stagings of Measure for Measure (for my money, the most unpleasant of Shakespeare’s “problem plays”), it’s hard to top Robert Falls’s dark take-no-prisoners 2013 production at the Goodman, which reimagined Vienna as Times Square, circa the late 1970s. (Think David Simon’s The Deuce on HBO.) But Henry Godinez’s […]

Theater Review

Democracy under siege

by Albert Williams October 27, 2022October 27, 2022

Invictus Theatre Company delivers a solid, sometimes stirring, and strikingly relevant rendition of William Shakespeare’s 1599 tragedy. It’s the story of Marcus Brutus (played by Invictus artistic director Charles Askenaizer, who also directed), a well-intentioned aristocrat in the waning days of the ancient Roman Republic, who joins a plot by his fellow senators to assassinate […]

Eleven actors of varying ages and ethnicities stand in a line on the set of The Winter's Tale, which looks like gray-and-rust industrial steel. A Black actor in a brightly colored robe stands above them center.

Theater Review

Winter in July

by Jack Helbig July 20, 2022July 20, 2022

This is a great play for the summer—despite its title—because The Winter’s Tale is as much about the coming of spring as it is the dreary desolation of December. At least that is what director Kevin Theis emphasizes in this high-spirited, lighthearted production. All that is positive, sweet, and redemptive in the play—the openhearted expressions […]

Four young people in flowing colorful robes surround Bottom, who is playing a guitar and wearing donkey ears.

Theater Review

Al fresco dreams

by Marissa Oberlander July 20, 2022July 20, 2022

On its ten-year anniversary and return from a COVID-19 hiatus, Midsommer Flight is restaging A Midsummer Night’s Dream,the play that started it all in 2012. On the night I attended, the crowd, close to 100 people by my estimation and incredibly engaged, was compelling proof that free summer Shakespeare continues to bring communities together around […]

Arts & Culture

Siah Berlatsky shakes up Shakespeare

by Kerry Reid June 24, 2022July 8, 2022

Siah Berlatsky just graduated this month from ChiArts, but though she’s taking a gap year before college, the 18-year-old playwright-director-actor isn’t letting the grass grow under her feet. In August, she’ll be part of Artistic Home’s outdoor developmental series, “Summer on the Patio,” with her Elizabethan-style gender-bending rom-com, Malapert Love, which she also directs. (“Malapert,” […]

Richard III, played by a woman, is seen from the back, advancing with a sword on a young Black man. The scene is lit with a greenish hue.

Theater Review

Tyrant times

by Dmitry Samarov May 25, 2022May 25, 2022

Steve Scott directs a storefront production of Shakespeare’s wallow into the nature of unadorned power-lust and demagoguery. With a minimal set—a couple benches, steps with a recess to indicate the space for a throne—and little in the way of choreography or any other theatrical gimmickry, Promethean Theatre Ensemble leaves the Bard’s words to work their […]