“What makes me a Christian to you, makes you a Jew to me.” So says the title character in Nathan the Wise, directed by Adam Immerwahr. Originally written in the 18th century as a morality play by Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, Michael Bloom has written this adaptation making its world premiere. A morality play can have a tough line to walk, especially to a modern audience – to be empathetic and entertaining without being moralizing and pat –
Macbeth at the Folger Theatre is unlike any production you will have seen before. That’s a guarantee the Folger can make as they stage for the first time since its origination Macbeth by William Davenant, a Restoration-era adaptation of Shakespeare’s text. Director Robert Richmond, in a collaboration with scholars and the Folger Consort musicians, presents a production that is the result of years of research and work to present something unseen by a modern audience.
Away in a manger, a fluffy sheep lies; a thief and his wifey have hidden their prize! The sheep it was stolen from shepherds at night, the thief and his wifey shall pay for their slight! Not exactly the Christmas Story everyone remembers when the angel came to announce the babe in the manger in Bethlehem, but quite the merry tale of revelry and celebration, this Second Shepherds’ Play. Returning to The Folger Theatre,
The truth within a lie. Isn’t that a quaint little sentence that sums up Shakespeare or most of it at any rate? It is if you’re playwright Aaron Posner and you’ve been commissioned to step away from your exceedingly brilliant modern riffs on Chekhov and step into a variation on the Bard’s The Merchant of Venice. Closing out the 2015/2016 season at Folger Theatre, Posner’s latest world premiere District Merchants,