Wintery Shakespeare

I just came from New York and saw precious little theater, mostly because I was a.) really disorganized (see leaving job), and b.) a bunch of shows were opening the day I left. Nice work. Thanks very much. Congratulations to me.

So, in the spirit of sharing wealth I don’t actually have, here are a couple of noteworthy productions you might want to catch if you’re on Manhattan in the snowy month of March.

First, go see A Winter’s Tale at Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM). Here’s why: it’s one of the late romances (in with The Tempest and Cymbeline), a little rockier than your average Shakespeare fan is used to and therefore infrequently staged, so if you can find a halfway decent production (which it sounds like Mendes has produced here), you should seize the opportunity. Also, it’s winter.

A word of caution: Ethan Hawke is in it (albeit in a small part) and, in my experience (and, it sounds like, Ben Brantley‘s as well), his take on stage acting is to overdo it with bluster and spittle. God deliver us from slacker movie stars taking to the stage.

Theater for a New Audience has put up a production of Othello that sounds great. If you like that sort of thing. By which I mean men being morons over inconceivably angelic women. If you’re in the mood for jealous rage to thaw a snowy evening, this sounds like a great bet.