Much Ado About Shakespeare

Ben Jonson, the original William Shakespeare fanboy, famously declared that his fellow playwright “was not of an age but for all time!” Four centuries on, Jonson’s claim has obviously proven true – even if the Bard’s enduring canon has often been refashioned to fit specific times.

Today, theatregoers are seeing a flood of Shakespeare productions and Shakespeare-inspired works that repurpose, refocus, and even rewrite his immortal texts to suit contemporary sensibilities. They range from updated treatments of the plays that, to paraphrase a February Washington Post headline, “try to fix what Shakespeare got wrong,” to comedies that gleefully mess with the familiar stories. Think of the 2022 Pulitzer Prize winner <i>Fat Ham</i>, which recasts the melancholy Prince of Denmark as the Black, queer heir to a barbecue restaurant. Or the female-empowering pop musical <i>& Juliet</i>, where the teenage heroine ditches Romeo to explore other romantic options.

There was a very sharp change in how Shakespeare’s plays and characters were perceived right after the revolution

But if current trends can seem audacious, they’re part of a long history of radical reimaginings of Shakespeare’s works.

One striking example comes from the former Soviet Union, where Shakespeare was reinvented to fit communist ideology following the Russian Revolution of 1917. Far from rejecting him as part of the “old world” that it sought to replace, Soviet scholars and artists reimagined him as a socialist prophet.

“There was a very sharp change in how Shakespeare’s plays and characters were perceived right after the revolution,” says Natalia Khomenko (PhD ’13), a professor in York University’s Department of English whose research is devoted to early Soviet adaptations of his work. The Soviet thinking was that “old world” culture should be kept if it was useful to the communist cause, she says. “And if it’s not useful, they’d make it so that it was.”

That led to some wildly skewed interpretations, including a 1922 state-funded production of Macbeth that reframed the bloody tyrant as a revolutionary hero for killing the Scottish king. “It tried to present <i>Macbeth</i> as a positive character because he was involved in a political overthrow,” Khomenko says. “They ran into a lot of trouble with that!” Despite some tweaking and additions to the text – along with outreach efforts to the proletarian audience – the show was a flop: “I don’t think it even finished its run.”

Much more successful was a contemporary rewrite of <i>Romeo and Juliet</i> that turned the tragic love story into a political allegory set during the Russian Civil War. Entitled <i>Ivan Kozyr and Tatiana Russkikh</i>, it takes place aboard a European steamship called Old World, where the star-crossed lovers are a pair of displaced young Russians hoping to return to the Soviet Union. Khomenko is presently translating <i>Ivan Kozyr and Tatiana Russkikh</i> as part of her forthcoming book, <i>Adapting Shakespeare in the Russian Revolution, 1917-1932: An Anthology</i>. It will also include translations of a Soviet adaptation of Hamlet and articles about Shakespeare from that period – writings that have until now been inaccessible to anyone who doesn’t read Russian.

We’re finally critically examining the Shakespeare canon and thinking about what it offers us – why do we stage it, and in what form do we stage it

As Khomenko observes, <i>Othello</i>, too, was a favourite in the Soviet Union during the 1930s, with its sympathetic portrayal of its eponymous Moor meant as a rebuke to American racism. “It was a critique of the West,” Khomenko says, “but at the same time, it was revolutionary. The Russians were doing something that anglophone productions would not be doing for decades, and that was to look at Othello as a Black man who finds himself in a white world full of prejudices and intolerances.”

We may wonder at these radical reinterpretation efforts today, but Khomenko notes that this desire to make Shakespeare “useful” continues in contemporary interpretations. “Because we’re finally critically examining the Shakespeare canon and thinking about what it offers us – why do we stage it, and in what form do we stage it – we’re doing very similar things today,” she says, “although perhaps not as explicitly as the Soviets.”

Indeed, one doesn’t have to look much further than this past theatre season in Toronto to find Shakespeare being continually re-examined through a contemporary lens. Along with the aforementioned <i>Fat Ham</i> – James Ijames’s witty redo of Hamlet, in which the hero decides not to revenge his father’s murder – there was also <i>Playing Shylock</i>, with veteran Jewish Canadian actor Saul Rubinek eloquently arguing in favour of the ostensibly antisemitic <i>The Merchant of Venice</i>.

While these shows unfolded at Canadian Stage, over at Crow’s Theatre, indie company House + Body depicted erotic tensions among young actors performing <i>Measure for Measure</i>, that notorious “problem play” whose themes of sexual coercion and abuse of power have gained fresh currency in the #MeToo era. The <i>Toronto Star</i> noted in its review that the production renders Shakespeare “relevant” for today, reflecting enduring societal issues of hypocrisy and corruption in governance.

Even the hallowed Stratford Festival has recently ventured into Shakespeare rewrites, courtesy of celebrated Canadian playwrights Brad Fraser and Erin Shields. Fraser’s controversial 2023 spin on <i>Richard II</i> took rumours about King Richard’s sexuality and exploded them into a tragedy of gay love set during the 1970s disco era. Shields’s acclaimed 2024 feminist tweaking of <i>Much Ado About Nothing</i> added new speeches giving agency to its female characters.

Richard Rose (BFA ’78), recently appointed to the Order of Canada, has also been instrumental in presenting Shakespeare in fresh ways for contemporary audiences. His acclaimed productions at Stratford include injecting vaudeville into <i>The Comedy of Errors</i> and integrating live rock music into <i>Hamlet</i> to underscore themes of youthful rage and rebellion. Rose’s innovative approaches have left a lasting impact on Canadian theatre, paving the way for directors like York alum Jamie Robinson (MFA ’15), who is redefining Shakespeare through diversity and inclusivity.

What do we want Shakespeare to function as? How do we integrate his work with contemporary voices?

A professor in York’s Department of Theatre, Dance & Performance, Robinson is at the forefront of promoting progressive approaches to Shakespeare. His work includes directing a multicultural, multiracial, gender-swapped <i>A Midsummer Night’s Dream</i> for Canadian Stage’s <i>Dream in High Park</i>. He also co-curated York University’s (Re)Casting Shakespeare in Canada symposium with fellow York faculty member Marlis Schweitzer in 2023. This event explored how diversity can reshape productions and inspired their podcast <i>Shaking Up Shakespeare</i>.

Robinson, who is Caribbean Canadian, emphasizes that diverse casts and creative teams can uncover new dimensions in Shakespeare’s work while attracting broader, younger audiences. “When you’re able to tell his stories in a different way, you get a new audience that’s hooked on Shakespeare,” he explains.

One production that deeply influenced Robinson’s perspective was Why Not Theatre’s groundbreaking <i>Prince Hamlet</i>. Directed by Ravi Jain in 2017, it featured a gender-bent, cross-cultural cast and integrated American Sign Language (ASL) through Deaf actor Dawn Jani Birley as Horatio. This innovative approach not only reimagined accessibility, but also reframed the narrative. “I didn’t realize that <i>Hamlet</i> was Horatio’s story until I saw Why Not’s production,” says Robinson, who began his career as a professional actor before taking his MFA in directing at York. To him, Jain’s work demonstrated that “you can tell the story with anybody playing any role,” breathing new life into the play.

For Robinson, productions like <i>Prince Hamlet</i> exemplify how Shakespeare’s works transcend cultural and linguistic barriers, creating space for new voices and perspectives. This notion of reinvention mirrors the adaptability explored by Khomenko in her research on Soviet reinterpretations of Shakespeare. Whether reshaped for political agendas or reimagined for diverse audiences, the plays remain a powerful tool for engaging with present-day issues.

“What do we want Shakespeare to function as? How do we integrate his work with contemporary voices?” These are questions Robinson asks himself as he shapes his mission of making Shakespeare relevant to today’s audiences. For him, the Bard’s genius lies not in being frozen in time, but in his work’s ability to evolve – to speak anew with every retelling. “You hear soliloquies and think: ‘Oh my God – I have those thoughts too,’” Robinson says. “It feels contemporary.” In those moments, centuries dissolve, and Shakespeare becomes not just a playwright of his age, but an artist for all time. ■