But there are other directorial prophesies to ponder. For instance, there are only six actors in Ting’s version, versus more than 20 in the most traditional stagings of Shakespeare’s.

For a few answers (and without wanting to indulge in any egregious spoilers), I had coffee at Book Trader with Barret O’Brien. He’s the only member of the cast who has two distinct characters—MacDuff and Banquo. The other players take multiple parts—porter, witches, whatever—and roll them into a single seamless character. The most consistent character is Macbeth, played by McKinley Belcher III, a recent graduate of the University of Southern California MFA Acting program whose credits include Tom Robinson in To Kill a Mockingbird at Bay Street Theatre and, notably, Dale Jackson in an another play about Vietnam vets, Tom Cole’s Medal of Honor Rag (at Shadowland Theatre in the Catskills).

Barret O'Brien (center, in red) as Dionysus bathing Pentheus in wine and honey in Michael Donahue's 2007 Yale Summer Cabaret production of Euripides' The Bacchae. Photo by Sarah Scranton.

I was a fan of O’Brien’s work throughout his time at the Yale School of Drama, between 2007 and 2009. So, apparently, was Eric Ting. “I think he had seen me in The Bacchae,” the actor recalls. O’Brien played Dionysus in Michael Donahue’s Yale Summer Cabaret production of the Euripides tragedy, and later reteamed with Donahue to play the title role in Ibsen’s epic Peer Gynt. “We met socially after he’d seen my work,” O’Brien says. “We started talking about working together sometime. When the workshop for this came along, he asked me.”

Since he last spent time in New Haven, O’Brien has co-starred in a national tour of Ken Ludwig’s crossdressing farce Leading Ladies (produced by Montana Rep), had one of his own plays (Eating Round the Bruise) produced by the Annex Theatre in Seattle, and spent serious time writing his first novel. He also married his YSD classmate Erica Sullivan, known to Long Wharf subscribers as the title canine in Eric Ting’s production of A.R. Gurney’s Sylvia, and to Yale Rep subscribers as Hester in Oscar Wilde’s A Woman of No Importance, directed by James Bundy. The couple has a nine-month-old daughter. Following O’Brien’s Long Wharf stint, Sullivan is scheduled to play Rosalind in As You Like It for the Oregon Shakespeare Festival.

Barret O'Brien (in yellow gown) as Jack in the Montana Rep tour of Ken Ludwig's The Leading Ladies.

Macbeth 1969 is the first Shakespeare play that Barret O’Brien has done since his Yale days, where verse drama takes up an entire year of the acting program.

There were a lot of logistics to work out in paring down Shakespeare’s Macbeth to a modern framework and such a small cast. “It’s like Eric took the all the text and cut and pasted it like a collage. It’s so much more complicated, getting the impressions straight in our minds,” O’Brien says. Ting, he explains, “is still changing things now, but the workshops were so major, and this time we just have the month of rehearsals. We’re able to give our input, but not like in the workshops. The script is really in a solid place. It’s like, let’s make the text we have work now.”

The actors have responded differently, and complementarily, to the demands of the adaptation. “Shirine [Babb, who assumes Lady Macbeth] has a strong classical background. She’s the ‘line guard’—it’s good to have someone in the room who’s a purist, who’s true to the text.”

Then there’s question of whether the Shakespeare plot, involving murders, witchcraft, disturbing visions and complex battle strategies, are happening in the reality of this production’s snowed-in hospital patients and nurses, or whether they’re perchance dreams.

“From my vantage point,” O’Brien says of his characters, “the things that are occurring are occurring. It’s a very realist design. It’s like a Middle American hospital in lockdown has appeared over there on Sargent Drive. There’s no musical score.”

“Shakespeare wrote this play before there were words like ‘shellshocked,’ but he understood what that meant. We’re not shying away from blood onstage. There are hints of a horror movie in this—people trapped in a hospital, snowed in, with a murder happening. It’s entertaining, not knowing what’s going to happen.”

At the same time, O’Brien insists the production is being very careful to uphold a heroic image of the American war veteran and not cheapen or stereotype it for the sake of fictional drama. “Not having served myself,” O’Brien says, “I feel a responsibility to not be glib. Theater can be glorious fun to do. To take on big topics can be very important, but also dangerous. It would be easier for us to just do the play Macbeth and set it vaguely in the ‘60s.”

There is a real-life veteran elsewhere in the cast—George Kulp, who’s playing the King role from Shakespeare’s play, rethought here as a prominent politician.

One of O’Brien’s roles, Banquo, is portrayed as a war veteran, as is his fellow soldier Macbeth. In Macbeth 1969, Banquo has “served in a firefight,” O’Brien says. “He’s suffered burns. He’s as deeply scarred physically as Macbeth is emotionally.” Macduff on the other hand, is portrayed as “not military at all. He’s a draft dodger.”

“This is a war play,” the actor concludes, “but we are trying to avoid making a statement about the war itself. If we’re making any statement, it’s that with war there are not innocents. We’re trying to reflect what Shakespeare wrote about veterans coming back from the war, and bring those elements to the forefront.”

Macbeth 1969 runs Jan. 18 through Feb. 12 at the Long Wharf Theatre, 222 Sargent Dr., New Haven.

The third 500-page volume in a trilogy which takes the characters in Shakespeare’s The Tempest a lot more seriously than Shakespeare ever did. Lamplighter has grown a whole mythology around Miranda and her siblings. Siblings? Yes, Prospero’s been busy—or just bored since he’s apparently immortal. Several of his offspring, however, have been swept away by Hellwinds. The family business, Prospero Inc., has problems you can’t itemize on any spreadsheet.

I find books such as this, which turn allegories and metaphors into role-playing game manuals, a tough slog, even when I care about the characters. My own philosophy of life doesn’t allow for so many absolute rules of existence. Some of the principles in this Prospero series can’t set a foot wrong without literally raising the devil.

“Is there really a connection between our little Eridanus and the Milky Way?”
“According to the Laws of Sympathy and Contagion, the similarity of the name would be enough to make a connection for a spirit being.”

First, as someone once said, let’s kill all the lawyers.

Each son or daughter of Prospero a special staff, each with its own special power: Winds, Summoning, Devastation, Decay, Persuasion…

Caliban’s on hand for a few chapters of this sprawling saga, but isn’t particularly funny, more of a tragic pawn. That’s a directorial choice, of course. The humor comes from sibling rivalry, from ancient spiritual cultures clashing with contemporary corporate civilizations and the endless banter among the enchanted.

Prospero Regained is fanciful and full-bodied, but too finicky for my taste. Shakespeare had the right idea in confining his magical goings-on to one small island.

http://www.hitw.org/

But isn’t it already obvious? The place has financial obligations. Here’s how they’ve cleverly solved their dilemma and maintained their charitable nature: two free performances during the run of each show. No reservations will be accepted for these performances, which will always be on the second Friday evenings and the second Sunday matinees, but the seats will be free.
As for the ticket prices, they’re comparable to what the “suggested donations” have been for a while now, and in keeping with what other community theaters (which DON’T schedule free perfs) regularly charge: $20, $12 for students & seniors. Musicals run a touch more: $25, $18 students/seniors.
Wise move. It’d be a pity to lose a theater of such longstanding as Hole in the Wall, over something as petty as bargain-hunting attendees.
Romeo and Juliet on the Bayou, a swampy conception of Shakespeare directed by John Peifer, opened last week and runs through Oct. 15, so its remaining free show should be Oct. 2 at 2 p.m. Next up is Jacque LaMarre Has Gone Too Far, Nov. 18-Dec. 10.

Curtain call from the Aug. 20 performance of Measure for Measure by the Elm Shakespeare Company in Edgerton Park. Snapped by Christopher Arnott on his iPhone.

By William Shakespeare. Directed by James Andreassi. Set design by Vladimir Shpitalnik. Costume design by Elizabeth Bolster. Lighting Designer/Master Electrician: Jamie Burnett. Sound and Original Music: Dave Stephen Baker. Technical Director: Ellis Benjamin Baker. Choreographer: Kelly Baisden Knudsen. Stage Manager: Amanda Spooner. Performed by Mark Zeisler (Vincentio), Sarah Grace Wilson (Isabella), Matt Cohn (Claudio), Eric Martin Brown (Angelo), Tracy Griswold (Escalus), Aaron Moss (Lucio), Vanessa Soto (Mariana), Aleta Staton (Mistress Overdone), Richard Massery (Pompey/Friar Peter), Michael Peter Smith (Provost), Colin Lane (Elbow), Jeremy Funke (Barnardine), Francesca Smith (Juliet), Kerry Tattar (Clerk/Francisca), Akintunde Sogunro (Abhorson), James Beech (Froth/ensemble), Henry Ayres-Brown and Michelle Johnson (ensemble).

Now, hmmm, the problem a lot of theaters have when doing Measure for Measure is… SWEET JESUS! WILL YOU LOOK AT THAT SET?!!
It’s a gleaming castle, four or five storeys tall (depending how you count), with something like a dozen separate performing areas. The structure towering over Edgerton Park the way the Emerald City does over Oz, or Mohegan Sun does over Uncasville.
Problem play? No way. Not on this set.

Interestingly, the only other really fine Measure for Measure I’ve seen, directed by Mark Rucker at the Yale Rep in 1999, also took advantage of a multi-platformed set and a costume design that appeared to span the 20th century.

(How many Measure for Measures have I seen, you wonder? Certainly it’s still a rarity on the outdoor summer Shakespeare circuit, but Measure for Measure is only considered a rarely produced play if you happen not to live in a college town—or in London, where the Royal Shakespeare Company has done it several times a decade since the 1970s). Personally, I’ve logged something like nine.)

This is a play that demands a broad palette, not to mention real commitment from designers and actors. Nobody’s able to fall back into cliches of Shakespearean comedy or modern melodrama. Comic scenes must follow hard upon descriptions of harsh torture. The plot unwinds awkwarding, its pacing awkward. Much of the action seems based on whimsy, but if the audience doesn’t feel the threats being posed to the characters, there’s no play.

Elm Shakespeare Company founding director James Andreassi and his dozens-strong team of professional actors, skilled designers and up-for-anything student apprentices have anticipated all these obstacles and overcome them. They get it.

An ensemble feel helps. Andreassi wisely likes to invite some actors back year after year, but his company has been around long enough now (16 summers, and over 20 productions) that there’ve been several distinct ensemble phases.

By my count, of the 15 main cast members in Measure for Measure (I’m excluding the teenaged “Elm Scholars” in walk-on roles), six were in A Winter’s Tale last summer and five others have been in previous Elm Shakespeare shows. That brings a smoothness and familiarity to an enterprise that has to exist under pretty precarious conditions., especially for actors. How does the cast feel when audience members answer their cell phones, or keep their oil lanterns or citronella candles brightly lit, or luxuriate on the lawn with dogs or babies during performances (all of which I noted during last Saturday’s performance)? How do they swat bugs off their thick unsummery garments? How many miles does a key player like Mark Zeisler have to log nightly clambering up and down that multi-platformed set?

It’s great to Zeisler back in full control of his Dukely powers, following what I felt was a stumble for this fine actor in last year’s ElmShakes production of A Winter’s Tale. Having essayed rulers of the underworld and ruthless military rulers in such modern anguishes as Sarah Ruhl’s Eurydice and Charles Mee’s Big Love at the Yale Rep and the Long Wharf, Zeisler gets to access the light side he revealed in the Rep’s rendition of King Stag. Of course, Duke Vincentio is a Shakespearean duke, after all, and some of his edicts appear cruel or dangerously casual even when he is professing to be beneficient. But Zeisler glides smoothly around those sticky issues, and makes the most of his time spent disguised in a Monk’s cowl.

The fact that you can’t see the cast sweat, and that they deliver Measure for Measure in such a measured, fluid, accessible manner, makes the Elm Shakespeare Company’s accomplishment all the more impressive. James Andreassi (whom I’ve known casually since he was a student of my father’s at Tufts University in the late 1970s) has not only kept an outdoor Shakespeare troupe going while many others in the country have succumbed to pressures of the current economy, he’s maintained high standards, luring Equity actors and—at least for the last few seasons—escaping the short greatest-hits list of Shakespeare plays (R&J, Hamlet, Macbeth, Midsummer Night’s Dream, The Tempest and few others) which most summer Shakespeare companies feel they can’t move beyond without alienating audiences.

The audience I was with Saturday night went for Measure for Measure without hesitation. It helps that Andreassi always builds big comic set pieces into his productions—here, it’s Colin Lane’s bumpkin constable Elbow whacking himself incessantly with his own nightstick and several saucy bits involving Mistress Overdone (local actress of long renown Aleta Staton) and the ladies of her brothel (one of whom assails Zeisler’s friar with the ad-lib “Hey, Father, what’s under the robe?”). There’s considerable trust on both sides—cast and audience—that this will be an amiable, free-spirited night in Edgerton Park. Even if the plot revolves around imminent execution and evil governmental machinations. Eric Martin Brown, whom I remember from his time as a Yale School of Drama student, is a handsome slender man who seems fated to upstanding leading man roles, so it’s fun watching him sink his teeth into such an unrelentingly nasty part as Angelo.

Angelo is the guy who is suspected by the Duke of undermining his power. So what does the Duke do? Pretend to go on vacation and leave Angelo in complete charge of the dukedom! Whereupon Angelo makes a bunch of hypermoralistic decrees which severely impact the livelihood, not to mention the lives, of the citizenry. As a parable about unchecked authority, of absolute power corrupting absolutely, Measure for Measures works pretty well—if only Shakespeare hadn’t kept the Duke, who returns more powerful than ever, as part of the equation.

Basically, though, the play is an excuse for unfettered frivolity, high suspense and higher dudgeon. The mighty get their comeuppance and the lowly get to scrabble and swear amusingly. Aaron Moss, the antic Autolytus from last summer’s Winter’s Tale, gets another plum comic-relief role as Lucio, who unwittingly talks trash to power. The other key comic supporting role, Pompey, is played by the bearded Richard Massery (veteran of ElmShakes’ Three Musketeers, As You Like It and Much Ado) with queer affectations, but frankly just about every Pompey I’ve ever seen has done a similar gay thing, including a horrendous Michael Boyd production of Measure for Measure done by the Royal Shakespeare Company in 1998 in which Pompey was made to resemble Boy George.

Arch characterizations aside, this is a multi-layered, deeply emotive show where various grieving characters—the vibrant Sarah Grace Wilson as Isabella, whose brother Claudio is marked for death; the sultry Vanessa Soto as the longsuffering Mariana; the weepy Francesca Smith, whose quasi-illicit marriage to Claudio is a cause of his arrest—keep the dramatic level high and hold their own amid the mirth. Matt Cohn as the imprisoned Claudio is able to have it both ways, getting laughs and tears for his torment.

Detail of Vladimir Shpitalnik's Measure for Measure for set, flooded with colored lights.

Again, such range and clarity simply wouldn’t be conceivable in these outdoor conditions without Vladimir Shpitalnik’s masterfully massive scenic design. An accomplished visual artist and illustrator as well as an inspired set designer, Shpitalnik’s local credits range from the interior design of the Oakdale Theatre in Wallingford to sets for chamber operas to the wooden sculptures and puppets which decorated the New Haven Green for many years as part of the International Festival of Arts & Ideas. His set here is both practical and purposefully extravagant. It has flashes of color which blend well with Elizabeth Bolster’s Edwardian-style costumes, yet is plain and clear enough to take the expressive shadows and moods projected upon it by founding Elm Shakespeare technical director (and frequent set designer himself) Jamie Burnett’s subtle lighting.

This is a fresh, perky production which makes the most of the words like “punk” and “urine” which pepper Shakespeare’s script. But this Measure for Measure also has a magnificence and elegance that befits both its Elizabethan origins and its immaculate Edgerton Park surroundings. It succeeds by any measure.

The curtain call of the first performance of Summer Youth Theatre's "Shake-It-Up Shakespeare" adaptation of Hamlet, at Long Wharf Stage II. Snapped furtively on my iPhone.

Final performance 7 p.m. Friday, Aug. 26 at Long Wharf Stage II, 222 Sargent Dr., New Haven. (203) 787-4282, longwharf.org. Playing in repertory with Threads of a Spider Web (7 p.m. Aug. 25 & 27).

Strangely, this is not the first time I’ve heard “Bohemian Rhapsody” performed live in its entirety by high school students as part of a summer theater program in Long Wharf’s Stage II space. The last time was over 15 years ago. There is nothing new under the sun.

On the other hand, it’s the first time I’ve heard “Bohemian Rhapsody” done by the Players in Hamlet, rewritten to fuel the plot thus:
Mama, I’ve just killed a man
Poured some poison in his head…

And I can categorically state that I’ve never before heard the Ghost of Hamlet’s Father intone “I Used to Rule the World” a la Coldplay. That same band’s “42” is also sung, along with a couple songs each by Evanescence and Death Cab for Cutie, the June Carter Cash/Merle Kilgore classic “Ring of Fire,” The Spice Girls’ “Wannabe” (delivered here by the young women playing Rosenkrantz and Guildenstern), the Jack’s Mannequin dirge “Dark Blue” (its sea imagery underscoring Hamlet’s fraught ship voyage to England) and Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah” (which here provides a play-ending soliloquoy for Horatio).

Oh, and the stomps and claps of another Queen song (the band, I mean, not Gertrude), “We Will Rock You,” punctuate the culminating duel of Hamlet and Laertes , who snarl the “Buddy, you’re a…” lyrics while violently stabbing at each other with violin and cello bows.

I don’t mean to make The Long Wharf Theatre’s Summer Youth Theatre Series production of Hamlet sound campy or forced. The show’s played straight and somber, shadowy and sincere. The teen actors show considerable talent. What’s most impressive is how fluidly this rock-theater rendition of Hamlet plays.

Impressive, though not exactly a surprise. There’s a rich tradition of classics being studded with modern music, dating back to at least the 1960s, though I’m used to it being more of a college phenomenon than a high school one. At Harvard University in the 1980s alone, there was Bill Rauch’s Medea/Macbeth/Cinderella (which brought in country & western songs along with Rodgers & Hammerstein) in 1984 and Alek Keshishian’s Wuthering Heights (subtitled “A Pop Myth” and infused with songs by Madonna, Kate Bush, Sting and others) in 1986.

The Summer Youth Theatre’s Hamlet features complete musical theater performances, integrated into the Shakespeare text with the accompaniment of an onstage band of keyboards, percussion, electric bass and a hard-working string section. Several of the actors double as musicians.

Of the 18 kids in the cast, five were in a similarly styled Shake-It-Up Shakespeare production of Taming of the Shrew last year. Three of those five—Jack, James and Jeremiah Taubl—are offspring of the Summer Youth Theatre’s musical director, Carol Taubl. This year they’re joined by their older brother Jack, so that various Taubls handle the roles Laertes, Horatio and both Hamlets (prince and ghostly dad),. Whatever those casting decisions may lack in, say, variety (those Taubl boys all look frighteningly alike; two of them are twins) may be gained back in the sheer delight the brothers seem to have in pummeling each other in the fight scenes.

There’s the usual youth-theater complication of teens playing the parents of other teens. The universal code of how older men are supposed to look—dour expressions and business suits—is applied for Claudius (Erik Van Eck) and the Ghost (Jack Taubl). As the dead characters in the play mount up, they all go sit underneath the high platform which serves as Elsinore’s tower. To older viewers like myself, the sight of nine teens brooding in a corner resembles a detention room scenario, or perhaps the “jail” in a game of Kick the Can.

But strong examples of creative problem-solving throughout this show outweigh such understandable and unavoidable obstacles as teens happening to look their age. Mostly, what happens when you strip down the stage to black-box essentials, stick a musical ensemble at the back of it, and insert pop songs into the soliloquoies and swordfights, is that the key moments of the play are cleanly delineated and plainly pronounced. The result is simply good scenework, an honest and brisk interactions between focused actors handling the Shakespearean scansion remarkably well.

Hamlet premiered last night, and has its second and final performance Friday, Aug. 26 at 7 p.m. A whole other Summer Youth Theatre series show, Threads of a Spider Web, opens tonight (Thursday) at 7 p.m. and has its second performance Saturday. Threads utilizes the same cast, stage set-up and theater/music mix as Hamlet, this time in service of a compendium of poems by Shakespeare, Dickenson, Wordsworth and Coleridge, informing a narrative about a family coping with the loss of loved ones in a car crash.

Annie DiMartino who adapted Hamlet, created Threads of a Spider Web and directed both shows, explained to me in a phone interview last month that the Summer Youth Theatre Series is “not a class. There’s no tuition. The kids really do audition.” There’ve been 15 hours of rehearsal a week since mid-July.

DiMartino incorporated modern pop music into the plays so as to give the young actors a quick handle on their characters’ motivations, and to further their input by having more mutural reference points. “They’d say ‘Oh, I love that song,’ and explore the connections. Like last year, when we piloted this project, and this year, doing two shows, I’m just awed.”

Despite consistent themes of death and despair, DiMartino considers both showsto be “totally appropriate for a youth ensemble. In cutting Hamlet (which still runs two and a half hours, what with all those songs in there), she says she aimed to “cut out the political commentary, and made it about family: Hamlet, Gertrude and Claudius. Hamlet is very dark, with the ghost, revenge, death. Threads of a Spider Web is more hopeful. It’s a nice balance for the cast.”

A Bohemian rhapsody, if you will.

So we checked in under names like the Shakespearean Players, Upchuck and the Hurlers, or, my favorite, Six Legs and Four Balls (I stole that one from Peter, Paul and Mary). We’d arrive at the Holiday Inn and they’d say “Welcome, Shakespearean Players!” We would say stuff like ‘Thank thee, sire” and “Will thou showest us-eth to our roometh?” (Try saying that with crackers in your mouth.) It was out there, but you know, at four in the morning, anything goes.

—Steven Tyler, Does the Noise in My Head Bother You?—A Rock ‘n’ Roll Memoir (Ecco/HarperCollins, 2011)

This show is the jewel in the crown that is the Yale Summer Cabaret Shakespeare Festival. You knew it would be, right? However groovy The Tempest, however whimsical As You Like It, Rose Mark’d Queen promised novelty, mystery, bloodthirst. According to YSCSF producer Tara Kayton’s program notes, artistic director Devin Brain’s “idea to adapt Shakespeare’s histories into one story focusing on the character of Margaret” served as the impetus for the SumCab’s whole three-play repertory season in the first place.

Rose-Mark’d Queen opens with a bunch of boys playing with toy soldiers. You might have suspected it would be like that, mightn’t you? I know I did. There are only two workable metaphors when dealing with military history: sports and war toys. I’m happy that Brain didn’t go the sports route, though his cast is certainly athletic enough. The audience is exhorted to take sides at one point, getting marked up with red or white chalk, but the childhood images are sounder, especially when they extend to Nathan A. Roberts’ poignant toy piano musical score.

One more thought-it-would: We get a familiar opening line, one that puts us at ease for what we understand is a grab-bag of scenes from a host of long plays:

O for a Muse of fire, that would ascend

And monarchs to behold the swelling scene!

At this point all expectations cease, and you are just plain in the thrall of a show that’s got so much going for it that it may leave you as breathless as its many deposed, disabled, dissembled or dismembered characters. Talk about your bright invention!

Rose Mark’d Queen, which Brain has cobbled together from Henry V, the three parts Henry VI and Richard III, is clever throughout, swift-moving and full of creative problem-solving when dealing with such sweeps of history in such a tight space with a mere five-member cast. It uses toys both kiddy and grown-up—from cloth dolls to an inflatable sex doll, from glittering gowns to fake blood—to keep the action both light and fraught. What mischief these playmates can get up to! Swearing, fighting, hostage-taking, torture!

The four-kings-and-a-queen ensemble (Matt Biagini, Marcus Henderson, A.Z. Kelsey, Babak Tafti, Jillian Taylor) are the tightest, most psychically connected cast of any of the three in the SumCabShakes festival (even though all but Kelsey also appear together in As You Like It). The mindmeld and shared pacing leads to some extraordinarily natural dialogue, considering how artificially pithy and pompous some of Shakespeare’s political pronouncements can be. As he does as Jacques in As You Like It, Matt Biagini has a natural talent for letting scanned verse trip off his tongue as if he’s informally chatting with an old friend. Babak Tafti nails an overblown, posturing wisecrack like “These words will cost ten thousand lives this day” by saying it to Margaret (Jillian Taylor) as if he’s pleased for having thought to phrase it that way. Likewise, A.Z. Kelsey spits “Ere sunset I’ll make thee curse the deed” (as Richard, to Clifford, with Henry VI and Margaret looking on, from the third act of Henry VI Part 3) as if he’s a mortal, not a swaggering cartoon. Marcus Henderson, who’s already proven his deftness at blending physical power with emotional vulnerability as Orlando in the YSCSF’s As You Like It,, not only fights well but leaves a good-looking corpse.
Jillian Taylor never for an instant makes Margaret a trophy wife—she’s whipsmart and gives abuse as good as she gets it—but also acknowledges that she wouldn’t have survived without sensuality and glamor. Though the whole night swirls around her, Taylor’s never above it but right in the thick of it. One of the wonders of Brain’s adaptation is how Queen Margaret is the play’s central figure without the other characters having to constantly acknowledge her. We get the main gritty male showdowns from all the plays, and then we’re reminded that Margaret was around too and had a stake in all these disputes. This is a continuity note that eluded Shakespeare, and which gives Rose Mark’d Queen its own strong personality and tone—one that’s refreshingly not based on chronological events in European history but on a single strong maturing character.

I’d fill you in more on who plays which king and why, if I thought it really mattered. There’s a royal family tree spanning 1327-1377 in the Rose Mark’d Queen program for those who need a scorecard, but honestly, don’t expect to be any clearer about British history than you would if you were plowing breakneck through a history book or BBC documentary. That’s the point of Rose Mark’d Queen. The point is how Shakespeare described power struggles, how he used flowing, poetic language to articulate vulgar impulses like warfare, how he captured sharp intimate exhanges amid the tumult of centuries of wild world history.
Rose Mark’d Queen is playful in every sense. It’s full of plays, obviously. But it doesn’t overburden itself. Just when one character starts to seem too prominent, the whole show shifts to fresh terrain. The show not only appreciate the kidlike impulses of world leaders, it respects short attention spans. The cast also appear amused by their own pell-mell playing style, amiably engaging the audience directly. They even improvise, mostly sotto voce away from the front lines of the Shakespeare verse. “You guys!,” they might cajole. Or scream “Mine!” when recapturing a dropped prop. “Oh man, I’m so dead,” was one interpolation on opening night (Saturday, July 9).
This purposely impertinent pageant of the past, fueled by both youthful fervor and intellectual precocity, deserves to have a future. Anyone who can collapse five of Shakespeare’s history plays into 150 minutes or so, with only five actors, deserves to have regional theaters beating a path to his door. As much as I love this original cast, I’d love to see other actors enter this playground. Rose Mark’d Queen is a tremendous achievement in knocking all those history plays together into an accessible whole, and I hope it gets a chance to move on up from the underground Cabaret space and make a little history of its own.