Shakespeare Over My Shoulder
Ted Lange
African-American Shakespeare Company
For acclaimed, award-winning playwright, director, actor, and educator, Ted Lange, it began almost sixty years ago while researching a possible role in Romeo and Juliet; it happened again in 1984 while at the Royal Academy for Dramatic Arts in London; and it continued occurring every few years over the next few decades in locations near and far to his home in the Bay Area. Lange kept running into scholarly authors asserting that someone (or even several someones) other than just William Shakespeare actually had penned the Bard’s plays … contemporary poets and playwrights like Edward De Vere (Seventeenth Earl of Oxford), Christopher Marlow, and Sir Francis Bacon.
Being a history buff himself as well as a literary creator, Ted Lange began to imagine while cooped up during COVID what if these three courtly sorts and a young, starving-for-money-and-fame actor recently from a hamlet on the Avon met in a tavern during the London plague of 1593? What if three playwrights who were worrying their written words and embedded insinuations could lead to their losing a head were looking for some unknown lowlife to put his name on their works so those works could be seen someday on London stages even though they dared not publish under their own names?
For Ted Lange, that idea was more than enough to inspire a series of the quartet’s rendezvous in Shakespeare Over My Shoulder, now in an intriguing, engaging, thought-provoking and oft-hilarious world premiere by African-American Shakespeare Company. With a stellar cast that the Bard (or Bards) would die for and under the playwright’s own watchful and astute eye as director (as well as with his tongue-in-cheek impulses), Shakespeare Over My Shoulder is a play “such as dreams are made of.”
The hilarity begins immediately in the White Hart Tavern as a wide-eyed young man with an evident “lean and hungry look” bends near cheek-to-cheek by a serious man with feathered pen on parchment, mouthing silently the words being written. Could it be a play needing a ready actor like himself for one of its parts?
Even when Shakspere discovers the annoyed but a bit amused Edward De Vere is only writing a poem (Venus and Adonis), he cannot stop bugging the Earl to find out if he is also working on any plays that the aspiring but totally broke actor might have a role. The Earl of Oxford does mention a comedy in the works about two sets of twins from Ephesus and Antipholus that sends Skakspere into an mode of audition with his taking on a hunched back, deformed fingers, and wobbled walk as his Richard III squawks with high pitch about “the winter of our discontent.”
Listening a bit dumbfounded, Mychael Anthony Brown is superb as the older Earl who has the accent and spoken beat of a much higher class than this boy who has accosted his quiet. When he speaks, it is often as in an oratory, leaning in to make his point with a solemn and firm air.
In contrast, there is nothing solemn or serious about Nic Moore’s Shakspere except how driven he is to earn enough for his next meal. His Shakespeare is a jumping jack of energy with enough nonverbal expressions to populate a modern screen of memes ten times over. When he later recognizes the playwright (and known spy for the Queen) Christopher Marlowe coming into the bar and talking with De Vere, Shakspere turns into a whirlwind of frenzy, soon demonstrating to the not-too-amused Marlowe how he can play roles of “romantic, heroic, comedic, or tragic” — acting each with huge gestures and heightened (and to us, hilarious) emotions, ending with a death scene longer and more dramatic than even the Bard (whoever he is) would one day create.
With special flair, drama, and just a bit of swish, Ronnie Rice is a Christopher Marlowe who is clearly a bit prima donna in his own right. Before Will’s interruption, he and De Vere have been discussing his latest brawl that sent him before his benefactor, the Queen, for killing a man — an opportunity among several in the script that the playwright takes to add humor by having the two African-American actors to say things to each other like, “You are black … Yes, I am black … You are the kettle and I am the pot.” Marlowe, it turns out, likes writing about the one set of people who are no longer in England after being expelled in 1299 and will later reveal a play he is contemplating about a Jew seeking a pound of flesh from a goy (a Christian) for a debt owed — a Jewish merchant in Venice.
To Shakspere’s total delight beyond dreams, in comes yet one more of London’s playwrights — this one also a statesman and believer of scientific method — Sir Francis Bacon. Bacon (a stern and persuasive Gary Moore) arrives to warn Marlowe that he is in deadly trouble and that they must stage his fake death in order for him to avoid the Queen’s and her Privy Council’s wrath. But Marlowe cannot imagine all his ideas for future plays and his invented black verse (“ta-dá, ta-dá, tá-da, ta-dá, ta-dá” five times on each line) not seeing the light of day in the future.
So excited is Shakspere that he grabs the limping Oxford’s cane and uses it to demonstrate his acquired swordplay, with Nic Moore once again taking the spotlight as his Erroll Flynn nature steps and stabs, jumps and jabs through the entire tavern, wowing not only us but the three, open-mouthed men who are his betters in society.
This barfly of a young fellow whose pesky presence is persistent leads the three poets/playwrights to an idea how to make sure the to-be-exiled Marlowe’s stack of plays in the making as well as some of their own might be published without their money, position, and titles — much less their lives — coming into jeopardy. All it takes is for a certain Shakspere to add an ‘e’ and an ‘a’ to his name to “give it more of a ring,” reminding Oxford of “the muse Diana shaking her pear.” After all, a better-sounding name, a guaranteed annual income, and even much unearned fame — what more could a poor boy from the countryside want?
But as we will come to see, this trio of writers may have bitten off more than they can chew now that they are a quartet. Just wait when they hear the ideas and possible edits this kid has about Oxford’s Moor called Othello or Marlowe’s idea about fairies interacting with humans in a woods.
Throughout the script, Ted Lange constantly sprinkles into conversations phrases like “measure for measure,” “love’s labor lost,” and “comedy of errors” — leaving out in the end few of the titles or references in one way or another to many of the Bard’s thirty-seven works. Among the playwrights that seek anonymity are also energetic discussions about such topics as the worthiness of women as actors, the prevalence of Jews in hiding in English society, and the use of live animals on an English stage.
To the tavern will also arrive a highly dramatic, full of tossed-hair airs, Lady Viola who brings lots of comments about a play she has seen that very day about “two gentleman from Verona” — one attributed to Shakespeare but one she seems to feel quite defensive about when seeing some changes she did not expect to see. (Lady Viola is played with full aplomb by a mysteriously named “Georgina Spelvina,” as noted in the program.)
Like any world premiere play, Shakespeare Over My Shoulder — for all its cleverness — might have need of a few, future edits here and there (in my opinion). With his love of history, the playwright includes the names of many Elizabethan court and society people that most audience members probably cannot identify and thus will miss the referred intents. (Fortunately and serendipitously, my husband and I had just finished two extended, streamed series on Elizabeth I and did recognize the like of Robert Cecil, Robert Dudley, and many more.). A discussion between Oxford and Bacon about possible references to Elizabeth in Oxford’s Venus and Adonis becomes quite technical, extended, and frankly a bit obtuse for the most of us. And finally, there are also a few references to stereotypes of Jews that were certainly held at the time but that in the script’s context, come off as jokes between the characters that in fact elicited laughs in the audience I attended, which felt uncomfortable to me. The latter in my opinion should for sure be struck from the script.
But these are minor for a script that overall zings with stimulating ideas for consideration and with a fun and funny thread that runs throughout. For anyone even remotely familiar with Shakespeare’s plays, there are plenty of opportunities for chuckles and grins — especially whenever these four actors really turn it on to joust with each other in much wit and some wisdom.
Director and cast are much aided by the cozy tavern of the late sixteenth London created by Ely McIntire with its wood interior, candle wall lights, and plenty of peanut shells accumulating on the planked floor (the last due to Shakspere’s ability to crack, munch, and swallow even as he is trying to impress others with his full-body gyrations, twists, and turns as he demonstrates his acting abilities). Kevin Myrick’s lighting creates the dingy but welcoming atmosphere of the tavern while also spotlighting moments of Shakepere’s dramatics into a stage setting worthy of the Globe. Music of the Elizabethan era permeates the evening as part of Alexis Brooks’ sound design while Alia Davis Brown has a heyday in dressing this troupe of thespians in the appropriate period and class-level costumes while particularly deserving kudos for a certain so-called Lady’s wear.
Like its 2025 Shaxspeare Reimagined, the African-American Shakespeare Company continues with this world premiere of Ted Lange’s Shakespeare Over My Shoulder to both pay homage while pushing the boundaries in regards to the Bard whose namesake the company takes. This is a premiere whose legs hopefully will be long and a show that deserves a full audience during its run in the intimate Theatre 33 of San Francisco.
Rating: 4.5 E
A Theatre Eddys Best Bet Production
Shakespeare Over My Shoulder continues through June 7, 2026, in a two-hour (one intermission) by the African-American Shakespeare Company at the Theatre 33, 533 Sutter Street, San Francisco. General admission tickets are available at https://www.african-americanshakes.org .
Photo Credits: Joseph Giammarco
