Shakespeare

Theatre for a New Audience’s current production of Shakespeare’s Antony and Cleopatra immediately submerges its audience in a world of sensuality and passion in which the title lovers engage in acts of lust as soon as the lights go down. Most of the show’s initial charm, however, wears off by the second act, as a weak supporting cast and a variety of unsupported directorial decisions leave it regrettably undercooked.

Only Patrick Stewart’s boots are visible as he descends on the industrial elevator lodged in the back of Brooklyn Academy of Music’s Harvey Theater stage to say his familiar first line as the title character in Macbeth. “So foul and fair a day I have not seen” is perhaps the most recognizable part of what is happening on stage, as the noblemen are clad in Soviet-influenced military uniforms and the witches are dressed as hospital nurses. Behind the apparent shock-value of director Rupert Goold’s new interpretation, however, is a carefully constructed modernization intended to capture the nature of the haunting “Scottish play” whose supposedly cursed name superstitious thespians have feared saying aloud for centuries.

Studying the politics of today sometimes requires the sort of distance critics apply to Shakespeare’s works. But we would be terribly remiss if we forgot that Shakespeare, like us, was caught up in the affairs of his time as well.

Though he notoriously falls from glory at the end of Act 5, tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow shall Macbeth live on, on stage and in film and, curiously enough, in opera.

It is fair to say that a good number of Columbians have taken advantage of these opportunities, but not all students are “theater geeks.” Then why does every second of every day feel like an audition?