"Marvelously fluid, riotously funny, and often intensely, even startlingly poignant ... it could just make you fall, all over again, in love with Shakespeare."

5 STARS! "Funny, often genuinley moving, and generates a glow you could warm your hands by."

“Shall I compare … compare … compare thee … to a mourner’s play?”

A young Will Shakespeare struggles to find the word -- any word -- to start his latest sonnet.  Only after a whispered “summer’s day” comes from his best pal and more-popular-playwright-than-he, Kit Marlowe, does his inspiration begin to kick in (especially as Kit continues to prod with more choice words and lines).  

Every writer certainly has a slump from time to time, but Will’s is bigger than Falstaff’s belly.  He is fiercely searching for a new muse in his life, someone who can save him from yet another lame comedy about pirates and their dogs.  That his inspiration will arrive as a young woman of wealth — one already betrothed to a Lord but one who is desperate to be on the stage that English law forbids her to be so — is just the kind of set-up any young playwright might die a thousand deaths to have.  Certainly it worked well for Marc Norman and Tom Stoppard as the backbone for their 1998 Academy Award winning film Shakespeare in Love, and it is a tantalizing backdrop for the play by the same name.  Adapted to the stage by Lee Hall, Shakespeare in Love is now playing in a must-see, exceedingly entertaining production at Marin Theatre Company.

Framed as a play within a play, Shakespeare in Love takes us back to the late sixteenth century as the playwright-in-the-making, still early in his career, is looking for an advance for his next play from one (or actually both) of London’s rival troupes. He is also in frantic search for a new idea of what is the world to write as a follow-up to his recent Two Gentleman of Verona.  The Queen (as in Elizabeth) has requested a play with a dog in it; the theatre entrepreneur Henslowe has hired him to write a comedy entitled Romeo and Ethel the Pirate’s Daughter; but Kit Marlowe keeps pumping him with ideas about a love story of the son and daughter of two rival, Italian families — a story that is destined to be as tragic as it is beautiful.  

That story begins to play out in real life when Will meets Viola de Lesseps after sneaking into a party her father is giving in honor of her expected engagement to Lord Wessex — a union she has no interest in making.  What Viola does want to do is to fall in love with the handsome playwright she on the sly kissed (and much more) at her engagement party.  And she is determined to be in his upcoming play.  

To do the latter, she dresses as a new actor in town named Thomas Kent and lands the lead role of someone called Romeo in Will’s play — one he writes as the two secret lovers live the developing script day by day (actually night by night) with new pages guiding both rehearsals and their making of love.  All the while, even though Will keeps promising the impatient Henslowe that a happy ending (and maybe a pirate or two) is coming, everything in the emerging script and in his own life begins to point otherwise.

Adam Magill and Megan Trout could hardly be better than they are as Will and Viola.  Mr. Magill has all the angst, impatience, and near-suicidal tendencies of a writer in trouble until he transforms into an energized and ebullient creator of iambic pentameter lines that seem to flow with full ease of guaranteed excellence.  That metamorphosis is seen and heard in his whole demeanor as he embodies, after meeting his Juliet, the very Romeo he is creating word for word.  In the beginning, he is an impetuous boy-barely-man who is willing to risk life and limb for just one forbidden kiss.  That kiss stimulates the flow of all kinds of juices within him, one of which fortunately for the world is the ever-increasing ability to write beautiful verse without Marlowe’s prompting.  

As Thomas the actor, Viola the aristocrat, and Viola the lover, Megan Trout reigns supreme.  When dressed in hat and mustache as the disguised Thomas, she is a talented Romeo in rehearsal whose lines are delivered with a sensitivity and sensuality that her fellow actors fully admire (none but Will knowing that there is a reason this Thomas brings something unique they have never seen before among their colleagues on stage).  As Viola the betrothed, Ms. Trout is reluctantly dutiful, courageously sneaky, and proudly resistant all at the same time (especially the last when repeatedly barked commands by her fiancé Lord Wessex, played with full aristocratic and chauvinistic snobbery and haughtiness by Thomas Gorrebeeck).  But when Viola the lover, Megan Trout is a Juliet prototype who could inspire almost any would-be poet.  Arm-in-arm with her Will with lips touching lips, the two create a script that causes all watching hearts to skip more than a beat or two.

Like in most of the Bard’s canon of plays, many of the minor, lower-class characters of Shakespeare in Love are memorably delicious and delightful.  Similar to the nurse in Romeo and Juliet, Viola’s nurse is often a show-stopper, well worth watching every moment she is on stage.  As the nurse who supports and continually covers up on the sly Viola’s love affair with Will, Stacy Ross is particularly hilarious as she covers her ears and sings in off-key (and loudly) in order to hide from herself and the rest of the household the rather loud love-making coming from her mistress’s bed.  Ms. Ross is also a bawdy tavern owner, Mistress Quickly, who gives a young Sam (Ben Euphrat) a chance to leave for a moment his normal role as lady on stage to be a man in bed.  And as Queen Elizabeth, Ms. Ross reigns supreme, especially in the wry humor she so well delivers in both her voice and her royal countenance. 

Robert Sicular is Henslowe, the impatient and worried owner of the Rose Theatre, whose overall jovial demeanor and friendship to Will betrays the persistent pushiness he tries to use to get Will to write in his pirates and ensure the tragedy-in-the-making has a happy ending.

An impish dwarf of a kid named John Webster, as deliciously and devilishly played by Sango Tajima (among four other roles), has a myriad of ways to don a face-filling frown; and while she plays the bad boy, it is tough in the end not to love her John.  Kenny Toll plays with flair, heart, and fun two key chums of Will: his inspiration for needed words to woo Viola and fellow playwright, Christopher Marlowe, and a exceedingly handsome and seasoned actor named Ned Alleyn.

Winning the hearts of his fellow actors as well as we the audience is Liam Vincent as a stuttering, wanna-be thespian, Ralph, who becomes an unlikely star. L. Peter Callender is the bombastic and blustery Burbage, Henslowe’s rival theatre owner, and proves that the union among actors is even stronger than the drive to secure one’s own packed house.  Lance Gardner and Brian Herndon each ably take on multiple roles, with the latter being the pompously pious Tilney who keeps trying to close the very theatres that his sovereign queen likes to attend. 

And as he often does when on a local stage, Mark Anderson Phillips leaves a fantastically memorable impression as Fennyman, the money man behind Will’s production who goes from demanding bully to  a sentimental producer with a big heart and a bigger desire to be on stage himself.

The intimate Marin Theatre is a perfect setting for Director Jasson Minadakis to give this production the kind scrappy, make-shift feel that provides authenticity to Shakespeare’s early, low/no budget beginnings.  With many of the actors also picking up instruments to provide music along the way (under music direction by Jennifer Reason) and with they and others often watching scenes playing out around them (as if observing fellow thespians rehearsing), there is a real feeling of excitement, spontaneity, and community throughout the production.  The warehouse look and feel of Kat Conley’s excellent scenic design where a rolling ladder becomes a balcony or a staircase and trunks and boxes in the background serve as seats and leaning posts enhances the director’s and the playwright’s vision for the play’s raw energy.  

Katherine Nowacki’s costumes establish the rag-tag nature of many of the characters while also letting us see the aristocrats and queen in all the finery and exaggerated collars that we also see in textbooks and museum paintings (not to mention PBS series).  The lighting of Kurt Landisman is a particular star in this production as he creates light that seems to seep in from unseen cracks and to have the glow of candles and torches.  Sword fight scenes are wonderfully planned and choreographed for both laughs and thrills by Fight Director Dave Maier and Choreographer Liz Tenuto.

Lee Hall’s adaptation of the Norman/Stoppard screenplay emphasizes even more than the original flm the determination of one woman to forge a place on the world’s stage — or at least on London’s — for talented actors of her sex.  While we as audience are moved by the doomed love story of Romeo and Juliet, we cannot help but be thrilled by the stand this fictional feminist of sorts takes in the stead of all the women who did dare to make their historic ways onto the forbidden stage.  Brava and bravo to Viola and to Lee Hall as well as to Marin Theatre for this engaging, enthralling, and educating Shakespeare in Love.

4 STARS! "The whole play is a love letter to theater"

“Shakespeare in Love”at Marin Theatre Company

Though movie houses used to regularly run double features (and some art houses still do), it’s just not something that’s done in legitimate theatre – for rather obvious reasons. Which is too bad, because one could make a great double bill out of Something Rotten! and the current offering at Marin Theatre Company, Marc Norman and Tom Stoppard’s delightful  Shakespeare in Love, adapted for the stage by Lee Hall. 

Both imagine Shakespeare as something more than a poet. In Something Rotten! the Bard is a preening narcissist, reveling in his celebrity like a starlet on a red carpet illuminated by flash bulbs and klieg lights. This Shakespeare (Adam Magill) is almost a polar opposite: a more complete, well-rounded character, full of anxieties and insecurities – and not necessarily the author of every word attributed to him.

If you’re one who subscribes to the hagiography that has exalted Shakespeare as the sole author of all his works, you might be offended by the many scenes where some of the Bard’s most famous lines or plot points come from the mouths of other characters, primarily Christopher Marlowe (Kenny Toll). Shakespeare’s contemporary and fellow poet/playwright, he assists Shakespeare in his wooing of Viola de Lesseps (Megan Trout), daughter of a wealthy merchant, who wants nothing more than to be on stage. While it can be a little disconcerting to watch Shakespeare stumble over “Shall I compare thee to…” and then have Marlowe whisper the lines of this famous sonnet so Shakespeare can repeat them to his beloved, this is not a historical play, and though some of the characters are based on actual people, it’s best to forget any preconceptions and let this delightful bit of entertainment cast its spell.

The cunningly-crafted script is brilliant, with a relatively intricate plot and elements of mistaken identity, cross-dressing, and conflicts between classes of the sort Shakespeare employed liberally. 

The story takes place early in Shakespeare’s career, soon after the premiere of Two Gentlemen of Verona, while he is trying to write his next play, Romeo and Ethel, the Pirate’s Daughter. Suffering from writer’s block and under pressure from his patrons, with his usual troupe of actors out in the provinces, Shakespeare faces “insurmountable obstacles on the road to imminent disaster.”  No disaster here, though, as Shakespeare and his company will somehow navigate their way to a happy ending – that is a direct result of his completing one of the greatest of all theatrical tragedies.

One of the most thrilling aspects of theatre for me is how a company comes together to create a world on stage. And so it is here – on two levels. First, there is the fictional company portrayed on stage, The Lord Chamberlain’s Men, of which Shakespeare was a member, and who performed most of his plays. The second, deeper level, is the company of actors director Jasson Minadakis has assembled. Watching them interact and play with (and off of) each other, seeing them in almost-balletic stage combat (wonderfully choreographed by fight director Dave Maier), witnessing their passion and respect for each other, this alone is worth the price of admission. There simply are no weak links.  This is an all-star team of Bay Area actors. However, special attention should be drawn to several cast members.

First, Robert Sicular, who never fails to impress. His ability to project power (as theater owner Philip Henslowe and merchant De Lesseps) – and then pierce that façade with the curl of a lip or a subtle physical deflation is wondrous to behold. L. Peter Callender is likewise brilliant in his roles, and Stacy Ross brings a wonderful regal bearing to her portrayal of Queen Elizabeth. (She gets one of the biggest laughs of the night when the queen absolutely burns Lord Wessex, who is marrying Viola De Lesseps for her money. When he mentions a fortune to the queen, she icily replies “I thought you were here because you had none.” Finally, ensemble member Sango Tajima is marvelous, exhibiting boundless physicality combined with a precision of movement that is nothing short of perfection.

For lovers of Shakespeare, this is a must-see. You’ll have a wonderful time catching all the different references to various plays and lines from plays (as when Spot the dog is sent offstage), and how the authors have mirrored many of Shakespeare’s signature tropes to delightful effect. But fan of the Bard or not, the music and the comedy and the romance and the wordplay are almost guaranteed to enchant.

Review: ‘Shakespeare in Love’ hits Marin Theatre Company stage

People love to speculate about William Shakespeare. Countless scholars and devoted hobbyists have tried to fill in the considerable biographical blanks of the artist who died 401 years ago. An extremely vocal subset insists that Shakespeare didn’t even write his plays and would very much like to tell you who did, as if we all didn’t know by now that they were actually written by Dracula.

Marin Theatre Company’s latest show, “Shakespeare in Love,” imagines an entire romance for the great English playwright, as the title implies. It’s not an earnest attempt to put the pieces together but a fanciful fictional exercise in “wouldn’t it be funny if...”

And yes, it’s the same story as the 1998 Miramax feature film (produced, alas, by Harvey Weinstein) that won seven Academy Awards, including best picture and best screenplay. The stage version premiered on London’s West End in 2014 and first hit the US in February of this year (Valentine’s week, naturally) at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival. Lee Hall, writer of the film “Billy Elliot” and the musical based on it, adapted the screenplay by Marc Norman and Tom Stoppard.

It’s a little bit of a surprise — or perhaps a relief — that it hasn’t been turned into a musical. There’s plenty of music in MTC artistic director Jasson Minadakis’ lively production, however. Musical instruments are strewn around Kat Conley’s contemporary set of skeletal scaffolding (interestingly reminiscent of the set for the company’s last play starring Shakespeare, Bill Cain’s “Equivocation” in 2010), and the impressive cast of 13 local actors plays them often throughout the play. They also occasionally break out into somber renditions of familiar songs from Shakespeare plays, music directed by Jennifer Reason.

Its plot pared down a bit from the original film, the play depicts a young Will (winningly earnest Adam Magill) struggling to make a dent in his promised play “Romeo and Ethel, the Pirate’s Daughter.” When he meets Viola (passionately eloquent Megan Trout), a rich merchant’s daughter who wants more than anything to be an actor — a job forbidden for women — their romance provides the template and much of the dialogue for the “Romeo” play he actually writes.

The show has a rollicking cast of characters that the Marin cast brings to life beautifully. L. Peter Callender is bursting with personality as blowhard actor Richard Burbage, and Kenny Toll is a similarly swaggering thespian as Ned Alleyn. Toll also plays a suave Christopher Marlowe who’s always feeding Will great lines and ideas, even acting as his Cyrano for Will and Viola’s version of a balcony scene. Robert Sicular is a hearty playhouse owner bedeviled by Mark Anderson Phillips’ sinister loan shark who soon becomes enthralled by the magic of the theater.

Stacy Ross makes a pricelessly imperious and sharp-witted Queen Elizabeth in grandly regal period getups by costume designer Katherine Nowacki, as well as playing Viola’s tender and quick-thinking Nurse. Thomas Gorrebeeck is haughty and menacing as Viola’s arranged fiancé, and Sango Tajima is an impish and amusingly bloody-minded lad. Brian Herndon doubles as the disdainful, Malvolio-like Lord Chamberlain and a stuttering wannabe actor, often with some impressive quick-changes. Lance Gardner, Ben Euphrat and Liam Vincent round out the cast charmingly in a multitude of roles.

The central love story is somewhat thorny considering that Shakespeare was married for his entire adult life. A marriage that, like everything else in his life, is the subject of much scholarly speculation is shrugged off here with a few dismissive lines. Even so, the romance is sold well, and sold hard, with countless parallels to “Romeo and Juliet.”

More than that, the whole play is a love letter to theater, and how things tend to come together out of chaos when it’s time to hit the stage. In addition to the gleefully fictitious suggestions of where Will got his ideas, it’s full of sly quotes from other Shakespeare plays strewn willy-nilly out of context. (“Out, damned Spot!” is said to an actual dog that threatens to steal the show.) You don’t have to be a devoted Shakespearean to succumb to its considerable charms, although of course it helps.

5 STARS! "The best show all year" 

"Shakespeare in Love" ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼ (FIVE STARS!)

The cast is perfect. The writing is sublime. The actors sing and play their own instruments. The boy gets the girl, kind of, though it's a moot point since the action took place more than five hundred years ago. Bottom line: Marin Theater Company's production of "Shakespeare in Love" is as good as theater gets. Barring a December surprise, this is the best show we've seen all year.

Adam Magill is a star. As young Will Shakespeare, during an age when females are not allowed on a theater stage, he is finding it impossible to find male actors capable of conveying the passion he writes into his characters. Enter Viola de Lesseps (Megan Trout), a beautiful young woman disguised as a man so she might also become an actor, and bingo! We now have more passion than the authorities can deal with. Magill and Trout make us believe they mean it when they kiss, something as rare on the Bay Area theater stage as an unlimited arts budget. 

The entire cast shines. L. Peter Callender, Stacy Ross, Kenny Toll, Mark Anderson Phillips, Robert Sicular and Thomas Gorrebeeck have the greater roles, but there are two show-stoppers in the supporting cast as well: Sango Tajima as the irrepressible young boy who can't quite get anyone to recognize him ( the "Anybodys" character from West Side Story) (Tajima also plays violin in the band); and the audience's favorite Molly (Spot the dog). The Queen does prefer a story with a dog, you see. On Opening Night, Molly, a cross between a standard poodle and a cocker spaniel) kept staring at the audience and wagging her tail as they Oooohed and Ahhhed. What a ham.

This is a collaboration of geniuses. First Shakespeare, then Tom Stoppard and Marc Norman's screenplay for the movie, and now Lee Hall's adaptation of the film for the stage. We know that with a cast of fourteen, each playing multiple roles, there are in fact hundreds of sticky spots. But everything feels seamless. Credit must be given to Jasson Minadakis for Direction, as well as to Scenic Designer Kat Conley, Costume Designer Katherine Nowacki and Music Director Jennifer Reason.

Quickly, away ye to the Buy Now key. Go fast, while tickets remain. Like us, you will want to go again.

We are waiting for the white smoke to come out of the Awards Division Office at San Francisco Theater Blog, because there are rumors of...wait...wait, yes!The San Francisco Theater Blog Awards Division has awarded "Shakespeare in Love" FIVE STARS! This is the first Five Star Review in more than four years: one star each for story, acting, directing, set and dog. How do you feel about that, Sango Tajima?

"It makes you feel grateful to be alive."

“A must-see, exceedingly entertaining production”

"An all-star team of Bay Area actors"