In the Before Times…
The Delacorte Theater in Central Park, as God and Joe Papp intended, filled with excited audience members on a summer night.
WHEN WE SAY WE want New York theater back, we mean all of it. Broadway musicals based on popular but less than profound Hollywood movies. Broadway plays starring Brits and Americans and Canadians working at the top of their games and with some of the finest scripts ever written. Off Broadway in all its forms, from solo shows on bare stages to revivals of historical dramas that we understand better now than we might have in 1910 or 1610, from little musicals with bigger imaginations than budgets to patchwork genres that we haven’t really figured out yet. And yet we will.
But if we were going to be dreamily romantic about it and could choose one particular piece of New York theater to return this summer — yes, only two or three months away (depending on when you’re reading this), not in the faraway fall — it would have to be Shakespeare in the Park, a beloved Manhattan tradition since the 1960s. And according to all indications and numerous reliable sources — including the Public Theater itself — it’s happening.
MAN WITH A PURPOSE A 1984 production of “The Merry Wives of Windsor” in London. That’s Falstaff, the marriage-minded central character, at the center.
Expect one free outdoor production this summer in the Delacorte Theater, not the usual two. “The Merry Wives of Windsor” is set to open on July 5 and run through late August.
That’s Shakespeare’s 1602 comedy, which focuses on Sir John Falstaff (already a familiar face and personality from “Henry IV”) and his pursuit of two wealthy married women at the same time. He’s thinking ahead to his retirement.
THE COURSE OF TRUE LOVE “Much Ado About Nothing” at the Delacorte Theater in summer 2019. Like this production, the new “Merry Wives of Windsor” is expected to have an all-black or predominantly black cast.
But in the spirit of the festival, founded by Joseph Papp in the 1960s, this version will have a new setting. Rather than the town of Windsor, where the royal family’s Windsor Castle has stood, in one form or another, since the 11th century) the characters will live — and love —in Harlem, the uptown Manhattan neighborhood associated with black culture and the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s.
The people behind the show:
*Jocelyn Bioh, an actress and playwright, born in New York City of Ghanian parents, master’s in theater from Columbia University, perhaps best known for ‘“The African Mean Girls Play.”
*Saheem Ali, the Public’s assistant artistic director, whose current project is the audio play “Romeo y Julieta.” Also a Columbia alum (master’s degree in directing), he was born and raised in Kenya.
Keep checking publictheater.org to learn more..
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