Shakespeare opens his charming comedy Twelfth Night with the oft-quoted line, “If music be the food of love, play on.” Though spoken by the romantically challenged Duke Orsino, the line has taken on a life of its own. Given how often people discuss the musicality of Shakespeare’s verse, perhaps it is appropriate that this particular quote has become so famous. Apparently, some have taken the sentiment to the next level. Cello phenom Matt Haimovitz is currently performing “After Shakespeare,” a collection of musical pieces directly inspired by different Shakespearean texts. Many of the big guns are included, such as Othello, King Lear, and A Midsummer Night’s Dream. The pieces are designed to reflect the emotions of specific scenes, characters and moments from The Bard’s classic works.

Combining music and Shakespeare is nothing new. Aside from the ballets, operas and other musical adaptations that the plays have inspired, the originals themselves often had musical components. The Fool in Twelfth Night sings and Ophelia’s madness in Hamlet is conveyed through song. Like the soliloquies, these musical interludes create moments of transcendence when the characters can communicate more directly with the audience. Given the lyrical nature of Shakespeare’s writing, the plays are as close to music as another form can be. Haimovitz approaches these qualities from the opposite direction, by finding the music without leaning on the words. Still, it is the words that are the root of the inspiration for these pieces. In The Bard’s hands, music is not only the food of love, but also pain, fear, pity and a host of other human emotions.

Just call him “Desdemona Man.” Boxer Gene Tunney, who became a champion after defeating Jack Dempsey in the late 1920’s, may seem on paper like an unlikely Shakespeare aficionado. After all, pugilists are not regarded for their intellect, and many are derided for a lack of it. The assumption is that muscles and physical agility must mask (or replace) a lack of mental capability. Tunney proved this insulting stereotype wrong with his highly analytical boxing style. What set him apart from other boxers of his time was his forensic approach to the sport, literally profiling his opponents as he fought them to work around their strengths and find their weaknesses.

Another interesting aspect of Tunney’s training regimen was his devotion to The Bard, whose words he often read in preparation for a fight. A new one-man play, Tunney/Shakespeare in Six Rounds, dramatizes the boxer and his love of Elizabethan poetry. The well-read bruiser is played by character actor Jack Wetherall (best known for his work on the American version of Queer as Folk). While reams of Shakespeare could be labeled inspirational, a show like this calls into question what passages might speak most to a boxer’s mental preparation for his work. Certainly, one speech that might fit is Henry V’s famous morale-raising speech before the Battle of Agincourt. It is after all a speech about war and giving a good fight, but mostly it is a speech about faith—and perhaps that was one of the things that made Gene Tunney one of a kind.

There’s a wonderful moment in the film Stage Beauty (based on Jeffrey Hatcher’s play The Compleat Female Stage Beauty) when a female actor and a male actor fight over the proper way to play a woman on stage. The conceit of the film/play is to dramatize the allowance of women on the stage for the first time in Restoration England. The actor is a soon-to-be obsolete specialist in female roles and the actress argues against his fey, frail interpretation of Desdemona. A woman, she asserts, would not simply succumb to Othello’s murdering of her; she would fight him for her life.

A new short comic play takes the same idea and dramatizes it. In Drop Dead Juliet, some of Shakespeare’s most famous characters (Desdemona and Juliet among them) argue with Shakespeare himself for more strength and dimension. Their battle is a good one. It is a challenge for twenty-first century actress to reconcile the limits of their roles to contemporary feminist sensibilities. Productions of The Taming of the Shrew must contend with an ending wherein Kate places her hand on the ground for her husband to trod upon. Personally, I marvel that production after production of Hamlet continues to have Ophelia lobbed about the stage during the nunnery scene. Presumably in such productions, we should all marvel at Hamlet’s raw, male rage, but I’d love just once to see Ophelia drop-kick him the first time he tries to lay a hand on her. The ladies of Shakespeare certainly have their limits, so there’s no reason for directors to further constrict them conceptually.

It is getting to be that tie of year again—pumpkins, scarecrows, really fake-looking spider webs, the seventeenth sequel to Saw …. the list goes on. Yes, it is nearly Halloween and people are getting their scare on any way they can (I recommend VH1’s new series America’s Most Smartest Model. Nothing can top it for sheer horror). Arguably one of the biggest draws this time of year is the haunted house, and this year Shakespeare fans have an opportunity to get a double fix of poetry and terror. Redlands Shakespeare Festival is hosting a “Haunted Grove” featuring an assortment of scary characters from The Bard’s most sinister scenes and plays.

You can bet the three witches from Macbeth are going to show up as well as the ghost of Hamlet’s father. However, since two attractions do not a haunted grove make, the creators have to reach a little further to come up with additional scares. One of the other scary figures the keepers of the “Haunted Grove” mention is Othello’s arch nemesis Iago. Huh? Don’t get me wrong; Iago is arguably one of the most evil and insidious characters written by Shakespeare (or anyone else for that matter). The problem is that his evil is completely contextual and, furthermore, not terribly scary—at least not in a The Hills Have Eyes kind of way. Audiences do not watch the play and scream “Don’t go in there! It’s Iago!” Even though the festival presents some scenes from the play to help the uninitiated, for kids this place is going to be a head-scratcher. Personally, I think Greek tragedy is much better suited to Halloween hauntings. Just don’t take the kids to “Medea’s Haunted Mansion.”

Shakespeare once asked, “What’s in a name?” For Shakespeare festivals, this is a very real question because the theatre in question has placed Will’s imprint upon itself. A similar question for Shakespeare festivals might be “What’s in a season?” Well, plays obviously, but which ones and why? While each theatre has a different mission statement, for Shakespeare festivals there are implied commonalities. If so, what purpose do the non-Shakespeare productions serve in a festival’s season? Are they intended to complement The Bard’s works or simply create diversity? A current production of the musical Little Shop of Horrors at the Idaho Shakespeare Festival made me wonder what is communicated about Shakespeare by the company his plays keep.

If you have never seen the wonderful Canadian show Slings and Arrows (which details the behind-the-scenes drama of a fictional Canadian Shakespeare festival), there is a terrific scene in the first season when the beleaguered new artistic director rattles off the company’s next season in less than thirty seconds. It is actually a pretty good season, but it underscores the notion that for some theatres, the productions are meant to stand independently from each other. Little Shop of Horrors is a plucky, deliciously dark little musical, but if I looked for comparison to Shakespeare, I would be seriously reaching. Is the plant a sassy, soul-singing Iago? Is Seymour a dorky version of Lysander? And where in all of The Bard’s canon would we find that wack-job of a dentist? Shakespeare’s plays and Little Shop of Horrors both have their merits, just not the same ones.

At the cusp of their nineteenth season, The Simpsons would seem to have exhausted their fifteen minutes of zeitgeist-dom. Yet with U.S. Box Office receipts at just under 200 million dollars for their eponymous movie, The Simpsons apparently still have their pop-culture mojo. Further evidence of this is MacHomer, a comic send-up created by Canadian actor Rick Miller. The premise? You guessed it, a funny riff on The Scottish Tragedy played by Springfield’s famously overbitten clan. If you’ve ever wondered what Lady Macbeth might be like if she had a blue bouffant and a raspy voice, this is the show for you.

The Simpsons still manages to set itself apart from shows like Family Guy and South Park, both of which are creatively indebted to it. The Simpsons is more structured and less kitschy than Family Guy, and sillier and less vulgar than South Park. Its broad appeal makes it perfect for lampooning Shakespeare. The characters seem very much like our own family and friends, and it is the juxtaposition of their everyman appeal with the elevated nobility of many of Shakespeare’s characters that makes the parody fun. Who wouldn’t love to see Marge and her two chain-smoking sisters as King Lear’s daughters? (Marge would be Cordelia, natch). Bart would be a hilariously cunning Iago, while Lisa’s intelligent, feminist outrage would be perfect for Isabella in Measure for Measure. And Maggie? How about the world’s smallest and least talkative Puck?

Before Branagh took up the mantle of Shakespearean film interpreter, there was Sir Laurence Olivier. Branagh owes a great debt to Olivier, and adapted some of the same Shakespearean plays into films. This year marks the centenary of Olivier’s birth, so there have been tributes aplenty—and with good reason. Some of Olivier’s most impressive achievements (in a career that had many) were his Shakespearean films: his seminal Richard III (1955); the buoyantly theatrical Henry V (1945); the blackface Othello (1965, not long before this kind of performance would no longer be considered appropriate); and, of course, his best known Shakespearean film, the Oscar-winning Hamlet (1948).

Olivier stood tall among contemporary Shakespearean actors (and sometimes directors) such as John Gielgud and Richard Burton. In many ways, Olivier represented the ideal balance between the extremes embodied by the other two. Gielgud was the consummate poet, with graceful movements and a mellifluous, resonant voice. Burton was Gielgud’s opposite—gruff and animalistic, with a larger-than-life personality. Olivier in his Hamlet found both the elegance and the turmoil in the character. His decidedly Freudian take on the material may have helped him give both qualities equal attention. His monologues were pure poetry while his scenes with other characters, particularly Jean Simmons’s tremulous Ophelia, were passionate and visceral. Olivier brought this duality to many great performances. Even late in his career, when he was consigned to the role of Zeus in the ultra-cheesy Clash of the Titans, Laurence Olivier remained a class act.
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Canadian actor Raoul Bhaneja is taking on Hamlet. And Claudius. And Ophelia. And Rosencrantz. And…you get the picture. It’s Hamlet as one-man show. While this phenomenon is not new, I’m struck by how often this particular play is performed in this manner. The psychologically complexity of Hamlet is so much a given as to be a cliche, and that is perhaps the driving force behind this interpretation. Aside from the desire to explore the play in a new way, the solo actor also provides himself with an Olympian challenge (and a showcase vehicle).

Hamlet is not the only of Shakespeare’s tragic heroes who might merit this treatment. It is certainly possible to imagine the similarly tortured title characters of Macbeth, Othello and King Lear receiving similar interpretations. Yet, to play devil’s advocate, it seems to me that there are certain safety nets built into this approach, namely editing that focuses primarily on the main character. I’d like to seek an actor do a non-jokey solo take on Romeo and Juliet. Imagine what the balcony scene would look like. Making an actor convincingly fall in love with himself (resist all actor jokes here, please) and take the audience along with him would be true virtuosity.

Who could have predicted that Xanadu would be an important cultural influence 27 years after its inception? For those who have never seen the film, it’s….certainly something. If the blatant misogyny of Showgirls prevents you from enjoying it on a so-terrible-it’s-riveting level, Xanadu may be the perfect antidote. It is utterly, blandly harmless (and, despite its reputation as a turkey, it was modestly successful when it came out). Its main asset is the soundtrack, which featured hugely successful songs written by E.L.O. (or Electric Light Orchestra). Many of those songs are featured in the new stage version of Xanadu currently tearing it up on Broadway. They are also featured in a decidedly unique take on Shakespeare’s classic tragedy of obsessive love, Othello.

Troubador Theatre Company’s OthE.L.O (get it?) is a kind of musical deconstruction of the play featuring music by you-know-who, with a title song sung to the tune of—you guessed it—”Xanadu.” TTC specializes in this kind of Shakespearean satire as evidenced by previous productions such as Fleetwood Macbeth. I’d be willing to bet that none of the critics who shredded Xanadu would have ever imagined seeing the names Shakespeare and Olivia Newton-John in the same sentence, but that’s show biz. In the mean time, I’m keeping my fingers crossed for Britney (Shakes)Spears’ Hit Me Baby One More Timon of Athens.

In a recent op-ed letter, a Shakespeare devotee opined about how much Shakespeare tells us about ourselves. The author reminded the readers of Hamlet’s oft quoted line about how a good performance should “hold a mirror up to nature” and stated his firm belief that Shakespeare did precisely that. Reading the letter, I couldn’t help thinking, “Really?” If it’s not a complete contradiction, I think I simultaneously, wholeheartedly agree and disagree with this writer.

Certainly, the emotional core of his plays resonate on the universal level. Romeo and Juliet taps into teen angst and unrequited love; The Taming of the Shrew is a sharp (if potentially sexist) take on the battle of the sexes; and Othello, Hamlet, and Macbeth (among many others) explore the depths of obsession, rage, and jealousy. Yet, wrapped around those emotional cores is a framework that couldn’t be more artificial. Potions that make sleeping people appear dead, witches, ghosts, and highly stylized language are but a few of the many artistic leaps our Will asks us to take in his plays. And yet, we take them. So, while that undoubtedly makes him a master craftsman, I’m not entirely convinced that showing us a reflection of ourselves is his primary goal or achievement. Perhaps Shakespeare’s plays are like that person on the street you fleetingly think is someone you know. They don’t look exactly like the person, but something about them just reminds you of them.