Theater: Belasco Theatre / 111 West 44th Street, New York, NY, 10036
Synopsis:
Two-time Tony Award winner Mark Rylance will star on Broadway in two very different roles: as the suddenly love-struck noblewoman Olivia in Twelfth Night and as the title monarch in Richard III . The plays will run in repertory.
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November 10, 2013: The man dressed as a woman dressed a man declares, with understandable agitation, that disguise is truly “a wickedness.” But don’t ask anyone lucky enough to be at the Belasco Theater, home to a peerless production of Shakespeare’s “Twelfth Night,” to agree with him. I mean her. I mean him.
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November 10, 2013: NEW YORK — The revered British actor Mark Rylance last appeared on Broadway, in 2011, as a larger-than-life hedonist and derelict named Johnny "Rooster" Byron in Jez Butterworth's Jerusalem. Several critics likened Rooster, who earned Rylance his second Tony Award, to Shakespeare's Falstaff in his exalted folly.
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November 10, 2013: In the last few months, New York has seen bong-wielding noblemen in Love's Labour's Lost, an all-female Julius Caesar, and two separate productions featuring hoodie-wearing Romeos. But those craving Shakespeare with more than a mere hint of authenticity are in luck. The great British actor Mark Rylance, who led Shakespeare's Globe in London for a decade, heads up fascinating, unforgettable revivals of Twelfth Night and Richard III (in repertory at Broadway's Belasco Theatre) that are as close to Elizabethan-era performances as one can hope to find in the 21st century. Could this be the winter of our contentment?
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November 10, 2013: More than any other playwright in history, including the Ancient Greeks, William Shakespeare has been reinterpreted in countless styles and settings. His work has been twisted into allegories for the political and social scenarios of every era imaginable, its dense thicket of Elizabethan language often pruned to make it more accessible to contemporary ears. The revelation – and there are many – of watching Twelfth Night and Richard III, the extraordinary repertory double-bill that comes to Broadway from Shakespeare’s Globe in London, is not the historical authenticity of their presentation. It’s that, rather than being reverential or scholarly, the plays are rip-roaring, user-friendly entertainment for the people.
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November 10, 2013: What sounds like a gimmick — a troupe of Shakespearean actors getting into costume and makeup in full view of the audience — turns out to be a stroke of genius when executed by the all-male company from Shakespeare’s Globe in residence at Broadway’s Belasco Theater. Toplined by Mark Rylance (“Jerusalem”), who plays the title monarch in “Richard III” and makes a lovely Olivia in “Twelfth Night,” these amazing thespians faithfully observe the theatrical rituals and customs of Elizabethan times, including the tradition of playing broad comedy directly to the rowdy groundlings in the cheap seats. And how we do love it.
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November 10, 2013: We’ve become accustomed to our Shakespeare with a gimmick. In just the last few months, New York audiences have seen “Macbeth” in an asylum, a sexed-up Romeo who arrives on stage via motorcycle and a “Love’s Labour’s Lost” relocated to a modern-day college reunion in the Berkshires.
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November 10, 2013: First it made the move from the South Bank’s Globe Theatre to the Apollo in the West End. Now the sellout Shakespeare production is taking the biggest step of all – across the Atlantic to Broadway.
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