I’ll second BBC’s plug for Chicago Shakespeare. My wife and I have been season ticket holders there for nearly a decade. We keep our tickets for one simple reason—the work is amazing. Here is the very best playwright presented by some of Chicago’s best actors and directors. I see people from age eight to eighty there, and they are all “getting it,” enjoying it, and being pushed to see the full range of what it means to be human. There is nothing better than Shakespeare performed well. I will be the first to agree with those who dislike the Olivier / pretentious rhetoric approach to Shakespeare. That is bull shit. But when good actors and directors play Shakespeare’s work in a visceral, blood-sweat-and-tears fashion, nothing is finer. (My wife and I joke that Shakespeare isn’t really Shakespeare until we see some spit flying on the stage.) We see humanity’s best and worst, and we leave the theater refreshed.
JDV
Mar 20 2002
03:53 pm
I’ll second BBC’s plug for Chicago Shakespeare. My wife and I have been season ticket holders there for nearly a decade. We keep our tickets for one simple reason—the work is amazing. Here is the very best playwright presented by some of Chicago’s best actors and directors. I see people from age eight to eighty there, and they are all “getting it,” enjoying it, and being pushed to see the full range of what it means to be human. There is nothing better than Shakespeare performed well. I will be the first to agree with those who dislike the Olivier / pretentious rhetoric approach to Shakespeare. That is bull shit. But when good actors and directors play Shakespeare’s work in a visceral, blood-sweat-and-tears fashion, nothing is finer. (My wife and I joke that Shakespeare isn’t really Shakespeare until we see some spit flying on the stage.) We see humanity’s best and worst, and we leave the theater refreshed.