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In the past, I've written about toy-theatre adaptations of such plays as Black-Eyed Susan , The Castle Spectre , The Miller and His Men , Oliver Twist , and even William Shakespeare's Macbeth . While all of those were popular on stages during the 19th century, toy theatres also presented less known stories, including that of Jack Cade's rebellion which is featured in the second part of…
Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes story " The Adventure of the Dancing Men " is an entertaining read, but would it make a good play? In the hands of adaptor Susane Lee, the answer is decidedly yes. On the surface, it would seem to be the least adaptable tale in the Holmes canon. After all, it's the story of a secret code (similar to Edgar Allan Poe's " The Gold Bug ") with half the fun being…
The Italian Renaissance writer Ludovico Ariosto is most famous for his verse epic Orlando Furioso . However, he also wrote plays, including the highly influential comedy I Suppositi , notable for a 1566 English translation by George Gascoygne called Supposes . Ariosto's first comedy, La Cassaria ( The Coffer ), premiered in 1508 at the court of Cardinal Ippolito in Ferrara. It was a hit, and the…
Faithfulness to a job has always been a fool's errand. Constancy is inevitably unrewarded. In fact, "Constancy Unrewarded" is the subtitle of Bernard Shaw's comical blank-verse drama The Admirable Bashville . Shaw wrote the piece as a mocking adaptation of his most famous novel, Cashel Byron's Profession . Of course, Shaw is known as a dramatist, not a novelist. Being Shaw's most famous novel is…
I've written before about the actor Edmund Kean's working-class associations, including his membership in the notorious Wolves Club . William Hazlitt , a theatre critic who admired Kean, frequently linked him with the common man. "Mr. Kean's acting is not of the patrician order," he wrote in the London Magazine in 1820, "he is one of the people, and what might be termed a radical performer."…
Augustin Daly's 1867 melodrama Under the Gaslight first provided the stage with the image of a helpless victim tied to the railroad tracks. Who was that helpless victim? A beautiful damsel in distress? Nope. He was a one-armed Civil War veteran who was trying to thwart the villain's wicked plans. The damsel in distress was the one who takes a hatchet, brakes out of the railroad station where she…
I missed Kevin Murphy and Laurence O'Keefe's musical Heathers when it was originally Off-Broadway, but now it's back at New World Stages, incredibly dark and incredibly fun. The musical is based on the cult-hit film from the 1980s about teenage suicide (don't do it) and the effects it has on a high school. This was long before Dear Evan Hansen , and the film's take on adolescence is far too bleak…
A while ago, I was doing some research on A.R.T. in Boston, and I saw they were putting on a musical called Two Strangers (Carry a Cake Across New York) . "Why on Earth," I wondered, "would a theatre in Boston be producing a new musical about New York City?" The answer, of course, was it was in development for Broadway, having already played London's West End. The piece was written by Jim Barne…
Last weekend, I saw Atlas Shakespeare Company 's production of Othello , starring William Oliver Watkins in the title role. Watkins was one of the actors I worked with when developing my adaptation of Moby-Dick , and he does a wonderful job as Othello, an authority figure who inspires awe in all who meet him. His undoing, of course, is Iago, played by Clayton Hamburg. He and Watkins had great…
The Atlas Shakespeare Company recently performed William Shakespeare's Henry VI trilogy in two parts, combining the first two plays, and then performing the third as a stand-alone production. When the Public Theater announced they would be hosting NAATCO performing Henry VI: A Trilogy in Two Parts , I knew I'd have to check it out, if for no other reason than to compare how the companies divided…
