Though hurricanes, the stormy skies and the trail of destruction they bring raged across America at the tail end of summer, all was calm and serene as professional artists and community participants alike graced the Delacorte Theatre for one last time before 2025. The production was a jubilant musical take on Shakespeare’s final play, The Tempest, as envisioned by Public Works, currently helmed by Lauire Wooley, featuring well-crafted, richly varied and genre-bending music and lyrics by Benjamin Velez and simple yet playful choreography by Tiffany Rea-Fisher. Ancestral spirits from Seneca Village and the Isle of Manahatta, the homeland of the
Tag: Central Park
Free Shakespeare in the Park’s HAMLET at The Delacorte Theater
If last year was “The Summer of Richard III,” with numerous productions worldwide and varying portrayals of the “poisonous bunch-backed toad,” including The Public Theater’s Free Shakespeare in the Park version directed by Robert O’Hara (see my StageBiz review here), then 2023 is “The Tale of Two Hamlets.” Two Public Theater productions featuring the titular tragic prince were running simultaneously at the time of Free Shakespeare in the Park’s Hamlet’s opening, the second being James Ijames’ excellent, Pulitzer-Prize winning modern-day riff on the Hamlet tale, dubbed Fat Ham, which transferred to Broadway and closed July 2 after an extension (see