A Shakespeare Jubilee!, a one-night celebration of The Bard’s work, was recently mounted at The Wallis with 34 actors and singers filling the evening with excerpts from plays and sonnets that have become mainstays of the English language. The night, which was narrated by Ioan Gruffudd and Joely Fisher, also included “Songs for Shakespeare” by John Dankworth and Cleo Laine (sung by Sherry Williams) and an aria from the opera “Macbeth,” (sung by Oscar ZC. Zhang). The show was organized to celebrate a Shakespeare jubilee organized 250 years ago by the actor David Garrick in Stratford, England to honor that city’s most famous citizen. Written and directed by Louis Fantasia for The Wallis and BritWeek, Shakespeare Jubilee! moved crisply from beginning to end in well-choreographed fashion, making for an entertaining as well as edifying evening. As the narrators pointed out, Garrick and other theater luminaries of the day were not above re-writing Shakespeare, especially when it came to plays like King Lear and Macbeth, going so far as to give those bleak dramas happy endings. Gruffud and Fisher also recited a speech Garrick gave at the 1758 jubilee in which he attempted to match Shakespeare’s poetry with is own, with fatuous and disastrous results. Also on the comic side were scenes from Much Ado About Nothing (acted by Joe Spano, Kitty Swink, and Lexie Helgerson) and A Midsummer Night’s Dream (Lisa Locicero and Nigel Lythgoe, tricked out in padded belly and donkey’s ears). Male/Female relations in the context of today’s Me Too movement were reflected in the scenes from The Merry Wives of Windsor (Jane Carr and Suzan Crowley) and The Taming of the Shrew (with Isabella Hoffman more than holding her own against Jamison Jones). The dramas that were brought to brief life included Richard III (Eric Brauden), Hamlet (Harry Hamlin) and King Lear (Peter Van Norden and Lexie Helgerson). Lear>O? was also satirized by a team of eight comic actors from Impro Theater. Four Shakespeare sonnets were beautifully interpreted by Gruffudd & Fisher, Kelsey Deanne & Finola Hughes, and Genevieve Allenbury & Suzan Crowley. The star-studded evening was a pleasure to watch and hear. The Bard would have loved it!
