For many years, Boston-area theatre goers could expect one or two Shakespearean plays during the theatrical season, unless they were fans of the several collegiate Societies, watched for companies touring the high schools or went to annual student productions there. Summer was the time that the Bard bloomed in New England. While this is still largely true, fall, winter, and spring productions were more prevalent this past season, starting with the New Rep inagurating their new home at the Arsenal Center for the Arts with a first-rate modern-dress Romeo & Juliet which was far more enjoyable than the American Repertory Theatre's grim interpretation later in the season. To open their second year, the Actors' Shakespeare Project brought former American Repertory Theatre Associate Artistic Director Alvin Epstein back from New York to star in "King Lear." The production in the B.U. Fine Arts Studio Theatre, a high-ceilinged former auto showroom has to be extended and is being revived briefly at LaMama in NYC at the end of June.
Shakespeare Now!, which tours the schools took over the Mass. College of Art Theatre for November, busing in students for the Scottish Play. The Aquila Theatre brought their National Endowment funded small-cast "Hamlet" into Emerson College's renovated Majestic Theatre downtown for a weekend. Boston Theatre Works, which does Shakespeare almost every year, brought Shakespeare & Co.s Jonathan Epstein and Tony Molina, on hiatus from the Tulane Company due to Katrina in to reprise their roles in "Othello" to renewed acclaim. And the Huntington Theatre Company, forced to replace a musical closed their season, ended the year with an Edwardian "Loves' Labours Lost" in which, as can happen, the clowns got the better part of the action.
In a sense, this last production marked the start of the summer Shakespeare season, which is not quite as active this year, and somewhat mixed. The Norton Singers are next with "Kiss Me Kate" downstate at Wheaton College, while closer to Boston, the Winthrop Players did a cabaret production of "A Midsummer Night's Dream" on their peninsula in Boston Harbor. In Cambridge the young 11:11 Theatre company is briefly doing their interpretation of "Romeo & Juliet" in Durrell Hall at the Camb. YMCA, June 23 - July 1. Out to the west in Amherst, the Hampshire Players are braving the elements doing "Macbeth" mid-month. The Publick Theatre, resident on the site of the fabled Boston Shakespeare Festival, which blew away in a hurricane in the 1950s, is not doing any Shakespeare this summer. instead they open at the end of June with "The Beard", an Oxfordian farce. In the past this company has done up to three Shakespearean or period shows a summer, but financial realities have forced cut-backs. "Copenhagen" joins their repertory in July.
To the west, in the Berkshire's, Lenox's Shakespeare & Co. starts July with "Hamlet", with Jason Aspery in the title role, and his mother, Tina Packer, the company's founder and Artistic Director, as Gertrude. Taunton's Industrial Theatre, which used to perform in the winter at one of Harvard's College, is bringing their outdoor park production of "The Merchant of Venice" to the University's historic Saunders Theatre in Memorial Hall for Harvard's Summer Arts Festival. Hampshire's second show "Much Ado About Nothing" starts in July, while Shakespeare &Co. adds "The Merry Wives of Windsor" with Michael Ingram to their repertory. Out in Concord, next to the Unitarian Church in Memorial Sq., the Town Cow Company performs "Measure for Measure" electricity free in the late afternoons. In the western suburbs, Medfield's Gazebo Players invade their park with "As You Like It." The Algonkuin Theatre, now in Massachusetts, will be playing their "Loves' Labors Lost" in three different suburban small-town parks. The biggest show of the month will be the Commonwealth Shakespeare production of "The Taming of the Shrew", set in Boston's North End sometime in the last century. Their free performances on the Boston Common have attracted audiences of over a thousand nightly, though their productions tend to emphasize clever anachronistic interpretations. Back out west, the Williamstown Theatre Festival is playing "Romeo & Juliet" August 2 -12.
The South Shore and the Cape seem relatively Bard-free this summer, but in Wellfleet through August , WHAT is presenting a semi-scholarly one-woman show based in early recording entitled "Shakespeare's Women in America." The preview at Harvard was quite enlightening and should have grown with additional material. On the Vineyars, the Playhouse is presenting "Much Ado..." outdoors in the Tisburt Ampitheatre July 19 - Aug. 12. The peripatetic New England Shakespeare Festival, our regional Tuckerites from Connecticut, are bringing their "A Midsommer Nights Dreame", scrolls in hand, to a park in Arlington Sun. Aug. 6. The Nashua Theatre Guild up in New Hampshire are also doing "LLL" this summer, while up north in Peterborough, the Players are "A Winter Tale ." Gurnet Theatre has announced "Much Ado about Nothing" and may have a run in Boston as well as in Duxbury while down in Foxborough the Orpheum is ending the summer doing "West Side Story."
The Actors Shakespeare Company will open things up in September with a production of "Hamlet", with their founder Benjamin Evett in the title role, directed by the New Rep's Rick Lombardo. Both the performance and the audience will be onstage in Dorchester's Strand Theatre. And Shakespeare Now! will revisit "Julius Caesar" at Mass. College of Art in November. Neither the ART or HTC are attempting the Bard next season, though their educational associates probably will. No national tours have been announced, but theatre goers will be watching for Fall announcements.