Shaxspeare Reimagined
From the Works of William Shakespeare
Rebecca Clark, Victoria Evans-Erville, AeJay Antonis Marquis, James Mercer II, Dawn Monique Williams & William Thomas Hodgson, Directors
African-American Shakespeare Company
The thirty-nine plays of William Shakespeare have been revisited, revised, and reconceptualized in thousands of ways since their first penning over four hundred years ago. To that tome of shifts in geography, era, gender, race, character mix, and more is now added a unique, provocative, and timely mash-up of segments of the Bard’s both best- and lesser-known works as conceived by six different directors. San Francisco’s African-American Shakespeare Company opens Shaxspeare Reimagined to provide a lens into Shakespeare through the cultural eyes, historical perspectives, life experiences, and current issues of Black Americans with particular emphasis on expanding and bending gender and sex-role norms. The result is a powerful ninety minutes where past, present, and future collide to offer new insights and perspectives into the Bard and into our own 2025 world.
As in many of Shakespeare’s plays, Shaxspeare Reimagined opens with a “Prologue” (directed by James Mercer II) where Awele Makeba as the evening’s more senior, mother-earth-like character — in the program identified as “Motherboard” — opens with a mix-and-mash of lines from a number of plays. With the other eight members of the cast huddled around her in slumber, Motherboard looking much like an ancient, African Queen first becomes Titania from Midsummer Night’s Dream (“What angels wake me from my flowery bed”) as her ‘children’ arouse in robotic movements, soon to loosen their cramped bodies enough to dance and hug each other like happy fairies in an enchanted forest (Dallas Thomas, choreographer). The “Prologue” ends with one of the Bard’s most quoted lines from As You Like It — “All the world’s a stage and men and women merely players” — to launch ten scenes with excerpts from a number of the famous tragedies, comedies, histories, and romances before concluding with a summarizing “Epilogue.”
The interpretations by the various directors range from whimsical to starkly realistic, from romance with a modern twist to a stand against sexual oppression, from slap-stick humor to pointed seriousness of today’s political scene. James Mercer II directs a rather cute, gender-bending, first meeting of Romeo and Juliet (featuring Cathryn Cooper, Ashley Raggs, Brandon DiPaola, and Mya Harris). Rebecca Haley Clark directs two separate scenes of As You Like It in which Rosylind and Celia flee in disguise to the magical setting of the Forest of Arden, eventually to find love (Cathryn Cooper and Ije Success wonderfully playing the fleeing cousins).
Love is also in the air in a comically confrontative scene from Taming of the Shrew (directed by James Mercer II) between Kate (uh, better call her Katherine to her face) and Petruchio with Ashley Raggs and Thomas Akins Jr. knocking it out of the park (and almost knocking it out of each other) as warring and wooing occur simultaneously. In each of these and in all other scenes, there is always a Black perspective fabulously and tellingly provided. These are not scenes lifted from the Globe itself but are scenes given meaningful African-American boosts (sometimes funny, sometimes anything but funny).
Lots of laughter filled the Taube Auditorium as one of Shakespeare’s most-loved scenes of comedy — that of the Mechanics’ play within a play from Midsummer Night’s Dream — is given a hilarious interpretation by director Victoria Evans Erville. Winning rounds of audience giggles and even a few shout-outs are Brandon DiPaola as a proudly accommodating “Wall,” Roosevelt Green as the wooing Pyramus whose death scene may be the longest yet in a Shakespeare production, Thomas Akins Jr. as the blonde-wigged and high-voiced Thisbe, and Mya Harris as a friendly Lion trying her best to roar in a way that would make Bert Lahr jealous.
The power of women — especially Black women — becomes central to scenes from Henry VI, Part 1 (entitled here “Joan of Arc,” directed by Victoria Evans Erville) and from Measure for Measure (entitled here as “Measure 4 Measure Medley,” directed by William Thomas Hodgson). Joan of Arc is portrayed strong and brave as she fights an English soldier, Talbott, from the former play’s Act 5; but she also is shown to have compassion as she eases her stick from his suffocating neck. On the immense, back-wall screen, scenes of Black Lives Matter protests and police abuse flash in startling glimpses to be followed by a succession of names of Black lives taken since Africans arrived on these shores in 1619. Throughout the evening, projections designed by James Mercer II supplement scenes with history’s and today’s realities along with a feel for a fast-approaching future still to be defined.
The physical perils of the streets that young Black men too often face in America is reflected in a harrowing fight of fists to the death in the climatic scene between Macbeth (Roosevelt Green) and Macduff (Gabriel Garrett) as tightly directed by James Mercer II and shockingly, authentically choreographed by Brandon DePaola.
The memories of horrific sea voyages of Africans along with the heritage of families too often separated become part of the story behind the story in a stage-filling set of scenes from Pericles (beautifully and hauntingly directed by Dawn Monique Williams). Background scenes of those laboring at seaports, emotionally chanted notes of the spiritual “Wade in the Water,” and supporting accompaniment of body and hand clapping help make a scene whose dialogue is unfortunately not always discernible but whose message is still powerfully memorable.
With such an array of scenes, not every segment is equally successful; but all are intriguing. With so many different pieces of Shakespeare on display, sometimes the context a bit difficult to grasp, especially because there is a wide range of success in various actors being heard and/or understood clearly in their delivery of Shakespeare’s lines. Part of the issue is at times in blocking (i.e., an actor speaking in too soft a voice facing away from all or part of the audience) and at other times, just the fault of the setting of the rather large Taube theatre and the fact actors are not individually miked.
The issue of understanding all lines is particularly true in maybe the most stunning and currently relevant of all the segments, Aejay Antonis Marquis’ direction of “The Tyrant’s Divine Dreamscape.” The entire cast lines up in across the wide, floor-level stage with one by one grasping and often donning a royal crown. Lines asserting various aspects of divine and absolute power are recited as voiced by a number of Shakespeare’s famous kings. From Henry VI, Part 3, “I have no brother, and I am no brother.” From King Lear, “I am a man more sinned against than sinning.” Again from Henry VI, Part 3, “My crown is called content.” Amidst these and many others (a number unfortunately unable to discern for various reasons in delivery and blocking), quotes flash in harsh black and white before us of similar, king-like quotes unattributed but clearly from a president who every day acts more like a king.
It is scenes like this last one mentioned that particularly make the African-American Shakespeare Company’s Shaxspeare Reimagined incredibly potent, once again proving the timelessness of William Shakespeare’s writings and the timeliness of reshaping them through Black voices and perspectives.
Rating: 4 E
A Theatre Eddys Best Bet Production
Shaxspeare Reimagined continues through March 30, 2025, in a ninety-minute (no intermission) by the African-American Shakespeare Company at the Taube Atrium Theatre in the San Francisco War Memorial and Performing Arts Center, 401 Van Ness Avenue, San Francisco. General admission tickets are available at https://www.african-americanshakes.org .
Photo Credits: Joseph Giammarco
