Fern Shakespeare Company

Past

An Intimate “Twelfth Night, Or What You Will” at the Slate

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Fern Shakespeare Company brings us now an intimate and funny Twelfth Night, Or What You Will at their new home: The Slate Theater. Using the performance method called Original Practice, director Wiley Basho Gorn, set a slow open to the show. The cast enters the stage and casually talk with the audience about everyday matters such as, what brought us out tonight, or how far did we travel. One can ask questions, I asked, “Who are you playing tonight.” I happened to be talking to Camille van Putten: “Viola.” “Oh, you have a lot of lines.” I’m not quite backstage, yet she’s not fully in role either.

My short exchange with an actor sampled the close contact of audience and performer common in Shakespeare’s time.

Past

Two Gentlemen of Verona behaving Ungentlemanly

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Bros before Hos

Although Shakespeare wrote some of the best poetry in the Western cannon, a few of his plays, are better left unperformed. Love’s Labor’s Lost is one, Henry VIII is another, (although I saw a stunning production by Therese Thurman one summer) and a third is Two Gentleman of Verona, currently being performed at the Slate Theatre.

Past

The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (Abridged) by The Fern Shakespeare Company

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The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (Abridged) expertly parodies the Bard’s work with puppets, rap, Freudian analysis, and more. In this encore production at the Slate Theatre, the Fern Shakespeare Company caricatures some classics with mixed results.

The Complete Works was first performed by its writers, Adam Long, Daniel Singer, and Jess Winfield, of the Reduced Shakespeare Company, at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe in 1987. Since then, this three-actor play has been performed by theater troupes all over the world. The show presents all 37 of Shakespeare’s plays in abridged, parodied, and/or combined form. With room for improvisation, audience participation, and other deviations from the script, it’s easy to see the appeal for both actors and audiences.

Past

MacBeth-The Definitive Production

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Five Star Production of MacBeth

It was with great delight that I attended Fern Shakespeare’s truly magnificent inaugural production, MacBeth, this past weekend at Seattle Center’s Theatre 4. Everything about this production was outstanding, and what set it apart from other Shakespeare productions around the Sound, was the uniform quality of the cast’s vocal production. Every actor spoke “trippingly on the tongue” and the elevated language was communicated directly to the audience. Truly this is the best Shakespeare I have ever seen in Seattle.

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