In 2007, The Onion, a satirical newspaper, published an article titled “Unconventional Director Sets Shakespeare Play In Time, Place Shakespeare Intended.” Although the trend of time, place, gender and plot-bent Shakespeare feels like a modern Baz Luhrmann-esque phenomenon, the practice has been popular for at least half a century. The phenomenon, while broadly popular, has its critics. Yet this is not the most pressing problem with contemporary Shakespeare staging. The biggest problem facing contemporary Shakespeare is the indifference to the playwright’s original language and intentions, depriving the text of its precision and effectiveness.
One of the earliest examples of staging Shakespeare in a different time period was Barry Jackson’s Macbeth, staged in (what was) contemporary dress at the Birmingham Repertory Theatre in 1928. In 1988, Ronald Brustein discussed these conceptual decisions, sorting variations of Shakespearean reinterpretation into two categories: similes and metaphors. Brustein says that “directors who are fond of similes assume that because a play's action is like something from a later period, its environment can be changed accordingly. Directors with a feeling for metaphor are more interested in generating provocative theatrical images.”
Brustein was audience to some of the most well-funded Shakespeare productions, and to this day, such high-profile productions still make shallow design choices. See Broadway’s 2024 revival of Romeo and Juliet, where characters donned cargo pants, plaid skirts and crop tops. The designer, Enver Chakartash, “wanted it to look like Gen Z, but lift it to elevate it a little bit.”
With that said, we should consider that the practical constraints on staging Shakespeare can differ wildly depending on the production budget. Shakespeare’s body of work may be the most well-known in history, and it follows that it is frequently produced across a range of theaters. Just as children across the world can play soccer with a water bottle, thespians can stage Shakespeare with the thinnest of resources. Not every theater troupe with a perspective on Twelfth Night will have the funds for accurate Elizabethan era costuming. I don’t think it's wholly ridiculous to tell your actors to thrift some poodle skirts and make it a sock hop.
Creative constraints, while sometimes resulting in puzzling stagings, do not generally preclude the possibility of putting on meaningful Shakespeare. Jessie Buckley and Josh O’Connor starred in a bare and effective production of Romeo and Juliet filmed backstage at the National Theater in 2021. The true contemporary Shakespeare problem lies in the bastardization of the language and meaning. If you speak to any seasoned Shakespearean, they usually place a premium on knowing the language deeply. But not all who participate in Shakespeare are Shakespeareans.
Many people know that Shakespeare’s plays are largely written in verse, but they often don’t understand the importance of it. The undesirable result is creatives who see no issue with adlibbing, even excessive adlibbing or adlibbing in contemporary English. With verse, you may not understand each word’s meaning, but you can grab onto the rhythm. While the role that adlibbing should have in any play is debatable, it should have no place in a play with precise rhythm.
To adlib is to say, “Actually, there was a better way of writing this scene.” Almost every time, you are wrong. When you stage a playwright’s work, you must have a requisite level of respect for the essence of the piece and its objectives. You should take seriously that the playwright toiled over every word, beat and comma.
What’s worse is the impulse of theater troupes to signal that they ‘get’ Shakespeare. The average actor might understand 60 to 80% of the nature of their individual sentences in Shakespeare. Fine, but the problem comes in how the actor demonstrates their own understanding. In precious moments of total comprehension, actors sometimes excessively indicate such understanding to the audience with indulgent choices.
In Much Ado About Nothing, there are two scenes where Beatrice and Benedick eavesdrop on conversations about their own lives, not knowing the interlocutors want their conversations to be overheard. I have seen quite a few productions of Much Ado, and you cannot imagine the excesses I have seen in Beatrice/Benedick concealing themselves and the gossipers pointedly relaying their messages.
The best productions of Shakespeare understand that he shouldn’t be so idealized that understanding the lines or even just knowing them is exciting. They get that it’s just theater. To this day, the Cornell Shakespeare Troupe’s rendition of the opening scene from Romeo and Juliet in 2023 is the best I have ever seen, and it’s because their Sampson and Gregory made the sex jokes, rather than signaling, “Do you get that I get that it’s a sex joke?”
Ultimately, effective acting choices and setting alterations for any show rely on a serious engagement with the material. Shakespeare in the Park’s Much Ado About Nothing (2019) was set in modern-day Georgia and ended with a rendition of “Lift Every Voice and Sing.” It was incredibly powerful because the alterations built upon the essence of the script itself (although Brustein may disagree).
There is a typical excuse made for ridiculous, unentertaining productions of Shakespeare: We have to make Shakespeare fun for all audiences! Don’t you think that production was fun? But don’t you think the actors looked like they were having fun? Shouldn’t we have some fun with it?
A reporter for Sports Illustrated Kids (a child) once asked Celtics Coach Joe Mazulla how he keeps the game fun for players. He replied, “I think fun is a cop out sometimes. When things aren’t going well, everybody likes to say, ‘Well, let’s just have fun.’ And it’s like, ‘Well, what does that mean?’” In the spirit of Hater Friday, I will admit that I do not think bad Shakespeare is fun at all. I earnestly believe that the most fun Shakespeare is on the page already; it just has to be seen for what it is.
‘Hater Friday’ runs on Fridays and centers around critiquing media or culture.
Chloe Asack is a member of the Class of 2026 in the College of Arts and Sciences. She is a staff writer for the Arts & Culture department and can be reached at casack@cornellsun.com.
