How do you solve a problem like The Two Gentlemen of Verona?  This comedy, often speculated by scholars to be the first of Shakespeare’s plays, is one of his least-beloved (and least performed) works – and not without reason. The language, by Shakespearean standards, is weak. The meandering story offers numerous plot points and themes that Shakespeare would address more skillfully in later, better plays.  And The Two Gentlemen of Verona’s notoriously dicey fifth act – which features, most infamously, a scene in which protagonist Valentine offers his beloved to a friend who has just attempted to rape her – is all but unworkable on both storytelling and moral grounds. [Read more...]

The Shakespeare Theatre Company’s hormone-drunk Two Gentlemen of Verona is a story of mad children at play in the house of their own hearts, adrift and rudderless in a storm of their passions, laughing and drinking and singing and skating closer to death than they can possibly understand. It is the interpretation one might expect from a director who co-authored columbinus, the chilling reimagining of the Columbine killings drawn from interviews with high schoolers and produced a few years back at Round House. It is also, perhaps, the only interpretation that works. [Read more...]

Get thee down to Penn Quarter’s Sidney Harman Hall to behold Shakespeare in the tropics, under the palms, smoldering in the Caribbean sun: it’s the one about the guy who secretly loves the girl who secretly loves him and the other guy who accuses the other girl of scandal on their wedding day and the despicable bad guy and the ludicrous creation named Dogberry. [Read more...]

Usually, I am not one for concert opera or musicals, but the concert-style staging this weekend of Boys from Syracuse by Rodgers and Hart at the Shakespeare Theatre Company is a delight. The pre-production materials all announced that this would be a scripts-in-hand event, but we the audience, like most of the performers on stage, soon forgot they were carrying anything.  In fact, the lack of behemoth sets and lots of busy staging sets this little gem free to put the emphasis where it belongs  – on the music. [Read more...]