The Year In Review 2023, and the Fourth Annual New York Shakespeare Awards

By Rodney Hakim of the New York Shakespeare social media; February 14, 2024

THE YEAR 2023 IN REVIEW

The year 2024 is here and off to a brisk start, as in what seems to have been the blink of an eye, we have already somehow sprinted past the end of January and jumped into the beginning of February. Time has gone by so fast, that we are even past this weekend’s SuperBo… err… Big Game Sunday, where the entire nation was riveted by the ultimate sporting drama; what Taylor Swift was wearing and drinking while watching her beau in the Big Game. We are already at Valentine’s Day, which is appropriate, given that this is our annual love letter to the world of Shakespeare in New York.

In this end of January, early to mid February moment, there are already a number of noteworthy Shakespeare happenings taking place all around New York, including the multi-time extended and incredible one man show from Patrick Page, All the Devils Are Here (link), a recently started and already extended one person take on Hamlet from Eddie Izzard (link), a production of King Lear from the Frog & Peach Theatre Company (link), a take on Pericles from the Fiasco Theatre and the Classic Stage Company (link), an iteration of Macbeth from the scrappy Screwdriver Studio (link), a version of Julius Caesar from Bedlam (link), and the final extension of the 13 year ultra extended, immersive dance-theater variation on Macbeth, Sleep No More (link).

We will be digging deeper into our coverage of these events, as well as many others, but before we look forward, let’s take a belated look back at the memorable year 2023 that recently came to a close.

The year 2023 was a year in which the name of the game in the realm of New York Shakespeare was adaptation. We saw all manner of adaptations of Shakespeare’s works, including the aforementioned one man show from Patrick Page, exploring the villains of the Bard’s works through a string of monologues connected by a narrative thread laden with historical context. At the other end of the adaptation spectrum, we saw imaginings of what Shakespeare’s most famous characters would look like decades into the future, after their initial story ends, in the way of a sparkling gem of a show in Betty Shamieh’s Malvolio.

In addition to adaptations, the year 2023 also saw a wave of wistful farewells, as well as welcome returns and new arrivals. The biggest name in the world of New York Shakespeare, the annual summer festival in Central Park’s Delacorte Theater, Shakespeare in the Park, bid adieu to New York for the next year and a half, as this past summer’s productions will be the last until 2025, with the Delacorte receiving a major renovation in the interim.

Elsewhere in the city, we said “fare thee well” to the Rogue Ensemble and some other plucky young groups that had sprouted up during the pandemic years. We instead said “hie thee hither” to new arrivals like Screwdriver Studio (link) and the Arachne Theater (link), and “what’s in a name” to returning and rebranded favorites like The Curtain (link).

Many other works fit into the adaptation continuum between history laden one man show and futuristic imagining, as well as into the categories of fond farewells and new arrivals, a number of which are cited below in our Fourth Annual New York Shakespeare Awards.

NEW YORK SHAKESPEARE’S PROGRAMMING AND SOCIAL MEDIA ACTIVITY IN 2023

Before jumping to our Awards roundup for 2023, let’s take a quick look back at New York Shakespeare’s social media activity in the past year.

The mission of the New York Shakespeare social media feeds has always been to find and share as much Shakespeare content as we can that is taking place in and around New York, across all stages and platforms, from stage to screen, podcasts to books, auditions to education, and more.

In 2023, the New York Shakespeare social media channels offered numerous programs, with live interviews with newsmakers in the New York scene, panel discussions with Shakespeare luminaries from both the performing arts and from academia, examinations of different plays and topics, discussions about numerous stage and screen productions, and other happenings across our social media outlets on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter (or X), LinkedIn, WordPress, YouTube, and beyond, all of which are archived and available for repeat viewing across our social media locations.

Two sets of new programming we added this past year both featured notable names from the world of academia, with a panel of scholars including scholar Paul Adrian Fried (link), writer Pauline F. Kiernan (link), and educator Royston Coppenger (link) joining us for a discussion of Shakespeare’s Mothers for Mother’s Day (link 1, link 2), and a separate grouping of writers, educators and acting coaches joining us for an extended Spotlight on Shakespeare Education series, consisting of sit downs with Shakespeare & Co Actor Training (link), playwright Scott Kaiser (link), acting coach Sarah Guillot (link), educator Darren Freebury-Jones (link), and scholar Farah Karim-Cooper (link).

THE FOURTH ANNUAL NEW YORK SHAKESPEARE AWARDS, CELEBRATING THE YEAR 2023

The New York Shakespeare Awards are a series of awards broken down by category, and represent what was, in our view, the most memorable Shakespeare in the year 2023.

To look back at last year’s Third Annual New York Shakespeare Awards from 2022, click here. For the Second Annual Awards from 2021, click here, and for our inaugural Awards in the year 2020, click here.

AWARD CATEGORIES AND WINNERS FOR 2023

AWARD CATEGORY # 1: Parting is Such Sweet Sorrow

AWARD WINNER: Shakespeare in the Park

The biggest name in the world of New York Shakespeare, Shakespeare in the Park, played it’s final performances for two years instead of one this past summer, as their famed performance venue, the Delacorte Theatre in Central Park, is now closed for renovations until 2025, per this link. Shakespeare in the Park has been bringing free, top level Shakespeare to New York City for over 60 years, courtesy of Joe Papp and the Public Theater. All us New York Shakespeare fans wait with eager anticipation for its return, including the Delacorte’s most frequent audience members, the resident raccoons.

https://publictheater.org

In a late update, the Public Theater just announced that despite the temporary closure of the Delacorte, they will present a touring production of The Comedy of Errors in parks around the five boroughs of New York City this summer, per the article linked here.

HONORABLE MENTIONS: The Kraine Theater and the New Ohio Theater

Two venues in particular that have hosted hundreds, if not thousands of performances by up and coming artists in New York City closed their doors for good in 2023; the Kraine Theater and the New Ohio Theatre.

The Kraine Theater was one of the two outposts of the Frigid NYC, a festival featured elsewhere in this article. Countless shows have been performed there, and it has been a launching pad and proving ground for young theater artists in the city for over two decades. See here for details about the theater’s closing.

The New Ohio Theatre, also an incubator space for young talents and smaller groups, was the host of numerous productions over the years, one of which in particular, The Shylock and the Shakespeareans, is also featured below. With theater audiences shrinking, and the costs of maintaining theater spaces increasing, many small theaters are getting priced out of their spaces, which are often torn down and converted to condominiums or other more lucrative types of real estate. For details about their closure, click here.

We sympathize with the artists who have lost their spaces, and wish them luck in finding other locations in which to ply their craft, and to continue bringing innovative Shakespeare to New York City.

AWARD CATEGORY # 2: Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow

AWARD WINNER: Sleep No More, Emursive & Punchdrunk Theatricals

This Award celebrates the shows that have extended long past their originally scheduled limited runs, and have become iconic mainstays of the New York Shakespeare world in the process.

Our clear winner in this category is Sleep No More, an immersive, dance-theater hybrid variation on Macbeth from Emursive and Punchdrunk Theatricals which was originally scheduled for a six week run, but ended up extending over and over for thirteen years (!!!) at its site specific performance space at the McKittrick Hotel (link). For a great article from Gothamist interviewing the show’s producers in this final leg of the Sleep No More journey, see here.

HONORABLE MENTIONS: All the Villains Are Here and Fat Ham.

Patrick Page’s one man show, All the Villains Are Here, was also scheduled for a limited run in New York City at the DR2 Theatre, from October through December 2023. After receiving tremendous acclaim from both critics and audiences, the show extended multiple times, and is now one of the longest running one man Shakespeare productions in New York history, and one of, if not THE best of that ilk. For our recent review of the show, click here.

https://allthedevilsplay.com

Similarly, the show Fat Ham, which is detailed further elsewhere in this article, had a run Off Broadway in 2022, before making the move to Broadway in 2023, where it represented not just the rare Shakespeare show on Broadway without above the title stars to support it, but also a rare Shakespeare based show on Broadway that was a commercial and critical success, and had multiple extensions, thanks in no small part to the larger than life characters penned by its Pulitzer Prize winning playwright, James Ijames. For our one-on-one interview with Ijames, click here.

https://playbill.com/production/fat-ham-broadway-american-airlines-theatre-2023

AWARD CATEGORY # 3: Shakespeare Classes, Workshops, Teaching & Instruction

AWARD WINNER: New York Combat for Stage and Screen (NYCSS)

In our past Awards roundups, we have given this award to outfits that provide acting instruction and/or monologue training, including the estimable Stella Adler Conservatory (link), the fine folks at Soho Shakespeare (link), and the pros at The Shakespeare Forum (link).

This year, while still recognizing the continued excellence of those programs, we shift our vantage point a bit to say that the group that stood out above all others is New York Combat for Stage and Screen (NYCSS), a stage combat outfit headed by veteran instructor, Jared Kirby, who literally wrote the book on how to stage the fight scenes in Shakespeare’s plays (link)

Their work and their teaching about combat with various swords and rapiers, and was on display in various locations throughout the year, including their always dynamic social media accounts. Most pronouncedly, their work took center stage in the thrilling take on the Henry VI cycle from Hudson Classical Theater, Margaret: Shakespeare’s Warrior Queen. In that production, NYCSS’s stage combat sequences were so thrilling, and their liberal use of stage blood so impactful, that the blood packs got their own sustained standing ovation at the end of the show.

If our endorsement of Jared Kirby and NYCSS’s stage combat in Hudson Classical’s show wasn’t enough, they also recently won a similar award from BroadwayWorld.com, in BroadwayWorld’s own 2023 Awards article, linked here.

New York Shakespeare and BroadwayWorld.com think alike on this, and are aligning in more ways, in a separate exciting announcement coming soon.

https://www.instagram.com/nycstagecombat

https://www.instagram.com/jaredkirbyfights

Honorable Mention: Shakespeare & Co Actor Training.

The Massachusetts based Shakespeare & Co., founded by the legendary Tina Packer, has grown and evolved over the decades into a multi-faceted teaching phenomenon, and they offered a series of multi-week actor training workshops in New York City in the Fall, helmed by Sheila Bandyopadhyay and Andrew Borthwick Leslie. You can view our chat with them at this link, in which they discuss their teaching strategies, their passions, and their unique method of combining Shakespeare text study with deep rooted internalizations and bodily connections.

https://www.instagram.com/shakeandcoactortraining

AWARD CATEGORY # 4: The Show Must Go On

AWARD WINNER: Katherine Lerner-Lam, Hudson Classical Theater.

Formerly our “Hardest Working Shakespearean in Show Business”, this Award goes to an individual who went above and beyond the call of duty in making sure that they put forward the best Shakespeare they could, despite adversity. While this award has previously gone to multi-hyphenates who coordinate multiple shows in a festival environment, or otherwise wear many Shakespearean hats, this year it goes to someone for gutting out a performance through intense pain and near immobility.

Katherine Lerner-Lam took on the titular role of Margaret in Hudson Classical’s outdoor summer production of the Henry VI cycle, entitled Margaret: Shakespeare’s Warrior Queen. I was surprised at seeing said Warrior Queen in a wheelchair and with an air cast on her leg at the performance. Apparently, she had gotten badly injured right before the show’s opening, and instead of dropping out, she persevered and pushed through, making her way through Jared Kirby’s dizzying fight sequences, often perilously perched on her one non-injured leg while doing so. With toughness and grit, she soldiered her way through a great performance, but in acting and in some tricky stage combat, and amid heaping puddles of stage blood spattered all over the ground. Her soldiering through made the show’s playing space’s name of the Soldiers & Sailors Monument seem all the more appropriate.

https://www.instagram.com/klernerlam

https://www.instagram.com/hudsonclassical_nyc

Honorable Mention: Erez Ziv, FRIGID NYC.

If anyone fits this award’s aforementioned previous definition of a multi-hyphenate, many hat wearing theater producer, it’s Erez Ziv.

This former rabbinical student turned New York City theater impresario has been organizing theater festivals in the Big Apple for well over two decades, namely the annual FRIGID Festival, among others. His Little Shakespeare Festival (see also our Events & Festivals category), once again brought the heat in the late Summer season, offering up a variety of experimental, small cast takes on Shakespeare.

Meanwhile, Erez was in the process of winding down operations in one of his group’s main outposts in the world New York theater, the late, great Kraine Theatre, which closed its doors for good after decades of offering up developmental and experimental theater, much of it tended by none other than Erez himself.

We bid a fond farewell to the Kraine, as seen above, but still look forward to many more years of Erez Ziv and the Little Shakespeare Festival.

https://www.instagram.com/ht.erez

https://www.frigid.nyc/

AWARD CATEGORY # 5: Shakespeare Events & Festivals

AWARD WINNER: Little Shakespeare Festival, FRIGID NYC.

As mentioned above, Erez Ziv has been presenting Shakespeare for years as part of his various festivals and downtown theater outposts, including the late great Kraine Theatre.

2023’s late summer Little Shakespeare Festival is a repeat winner from 2022, and went even further than before in offering up some of the most intriguing and innovative Shakespeare in town.

With a mix of young groups, including Hamlet Isn’t Dead (link), CAGE Theatre Company (link), As You Will (link), Barefoot Shakespeare Company (link), First Flight Theatre Company (link), and Djingo Productions (link), offering dramatically different styles of experimental takes on Shakespeare, the Little Shakespeare Festival, produced by Erez Ziv (link) and curated by Conor Mullen (link), proved once again to be the hottest ticket in town. For our discussion with the Little Shakespeare Festival team, see here.

https://www.frigid.nyc/

Link

Honorable Mention: The Carriage House Players’ Summer Shakespeare Festival.

The Carriage House Players have had a long history of presenting outdoor summer Shakespeare in Long Island’s historic Vanderbilt Mansion, presenting a different Shakespeare show each month for four months. In the Summer of 2023, they covered the spectrum from comedy to tragedy with a range of high quality offerings, all under the watchful eye of veteran producer (and occasional performer), Evan Donnellan. If you’ve never been, make it a point to visit their festival this coming Summer. The shows are fun and well put together, and the scenery of the grounds and the surrounding environment is so bucolic and picturesque, you’ll feel like you’ve stepped onto the shores of Illyria, itself.

Link

AWARD CATEGORY # 6: Shakespeare Adaptations & Modernizations

AWARD WINNER: Fat Ham, James Ijames.

One of the biggest winners in the world of New York Shakespeare in 2023 was playwright James Ijames, whose adaptation of Hamlet, Fat Ham had a truly incredible year, as alluded to earlier in this article. The show transports the story of the Melancholy Dane to the current day American South, with a queer, African-American character and his dysfunctional family at the center. Fat Ham appeared downtown in 2022 at the Public Theater, and in a major move, transferred to Broadway in 2023, where it was a major hit with multiple extensions. In addition to the incredible feat of having his adaptation of Hamlet run on Broadway, Ijames was also awarded a Pulitzer Prize for the play, cementing his name as one of the most important playwrights of the current era. For our exclusive one-on-one interview with Ijames, click here.

https://www.instagram.com/jwijames

https://www.instagram.com/fathambway

Honorable Mention: The Shylock and the Shakespeareans, Edward Einhorn.

Playwright Edward Einhorn put forth a fine adaptation of The Merchant of Venice in the late Spring, playing on stage in one of the venues that we sadly said farewell to in 2023, the New Ohio Theatre, as mentioned above. The show, The Shylock and the Shakespeareans, was like a funhouse mirror version of Merchant, reflecting unusual angles on Shylock, himself, and even more so on those around him, and finding new layers of bias, enmity, and antagonism in the relationship between them all. In an admirable move, the show played first on stage, and was then made available on demand online for a period of time, with a remarkably clear multi-camera shoot bringing the stage action smoothly to the small screen. This is a model that many of the smaller groups around town should emulate, and a way to bridge the gap between shrinking audiences, disappearing theaters, and mobile and on-demand oriented theater goers. For our chat with Edward Einhorn, click here.

https://www.instagram.com/edwardeinhorn

AWARD CATEGORY # 7: Shakespeare Solos

AWARD WINNER: All the Devils Are Here, Patrick Page.

One of the shows that made the most impact this past year was the one man show from stage and screen star, Patrick Page, All the Devils Are Here. In the show, Page runs through a series of monologues and soliloquies from the villains in Shakespeare’s plays, cleverly tying them together with anecdotes from his long career, along with a well researched through line of historical context about Shakespeare and his development as a playwright. As cited above, it was a rare show that extended past its year end limited run, with multiple extensions that are seeing this excellent show carry through until the end of March, as detailed in our recent review, once again linked here.

https://allthedevilsplay.com/

Honorable Mention: The ShakesYear Project, Kitty Mortland.

This online series from performer Kitty Mortland puts forward a short daily video, usually only a couple of minutes long, with Mortland exploring a small chunk of Shakespearean text, day by day. After winning our Solos Award in 2022, Mortland reached the end of the main corpus of Shakespeare’s works, and took a hiatus of several months, before coming back with renewed vigor, and a newfound body of plays to work on from Shakespeare’s Apocrypha. She also moved out of New York City and back to her native Chicago. The Big Apple’s loss is the Windy City’s gain, but thankfully, her daily videos are back, and as enjoyable as ever.

https://www.instagram.com/1womanshakes/

AWARD CATEGORY # 8: Shakespeare Podcasts & Audio

AWARD WINNER: That Shakespeare Life, Cassidy Cash.

In the realm of Shakespeare related audio programs, the biggest name in the field is the Shakespeare Unlimited podcast from Folger Shakespeare Library, based in Washington D.C. The second biggest name, and our Award winner for 2023, is That Shakespeare Life from historian Cassidy Cash, which delivers a weekly exploration of various questions of life in Elizabethan England.

Each Monday morning, Cassidy Cash drops her latest episode, and she enlists a who’s who of experts in Shakespeare research and scholarship in shedding light on previously obscure corners of understanding. What’s most charming about this podcast is that the discussions are so fun and easygoing, and are done at a level that is not difficult to understand or engage with, even if the questions themselves can be technical and challenging. Despite the fact that Cassidy Cash is based in Alabama and not in New York, her show has had such strong reach that a number of New York based theater troupes have reached out to her about featuring their productions on her podcast, and being the kind and generous soul that she is, she routinely redirects them to the New York Shakespeare social media. For our recent discussion with Cassidy Cash, click here.

Link

Honorable Mentions: The Bardcast: It’s Shakespeare, You Dick! and The F*ck Shakespeare Podcast:

Our 2021 and 2022 Award Winners, these two entertaining and irreverent podcasts continue to churn out informative and engaging episodes, exploring the ins and outs (pun intended) of Shakespeare. The Bardcast is hosted by actors and educators, Lisa Ann Goldsmith and Owen Thompson, and takes a fun and lighthearted look into different questions about Shakespeare’s plays.

https://www.thebardcastyoudick.com/

The F*ck Shakespeare podcast is helmed by theater artists , educators, and sometime phone sex operator (!) Erin de Ward and Diana Green. Green and de Ward delve deep into Shakespearean double entendres and sexual innuendo, and don’t shy away from Bardian phallus jokes or other blue humor, but rather revel in it, lustily laughing while drawing out deep meaning in a granular analysis of Shakespeare’s texts.

https://fckshakespeare.com/

AWARD CATEGORY # 9: Shakespeare Related Books

AWARD WINNER: The Great White Bard, by Farah Karim-Cooper.

Scholar Farah Karim-Cooper put forward an outstanding book this year, The Great White Bard, delving into the issues of race and racism in Shakespeare’s texts, as well as in Elizabethan England. Karim-Cooper, a scholar, writer and educator in the UK, is one of the key figures in the educational sector of Shakespeare’s Globe, and also maintains a long running history with King’s College London. Despite her elite educational pedigree, the beauty of Karim-Cooper’s book is the simplicity with which it addresses complex and nuanced subject matter, making readily accessible to the everyday reader what might in other hands be an academic discussion for scholars only. For our Spotlight on Education episode with Karim-Cooper, which happened to coincide with a momentous day for Shakespeareans, click here.

https://www.shakespearesglobe.com/bio/dr-farah-karim-cooper

Honorable Mentions: Shakespeare’s Tutor and Reading Robert Greene, Darren Freebury-Jones.

During our Spotlight on Education series, we had the chance to chat with one of the leading names from the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust, Dr. Darren Freebury-Jones, the video of which is available here.

Freebury-Jones shares his expertise in an area of Shakespeare scholarship somewhat outside of the mainstream, with his focus being on Shakespeare’s contemporaries, and on identifying the authors of various works from the Apocrypha. His books, Shakespeare’s Tutor: The Influence of Thomas Kyd and Reading Robert Greene, are wonderful explorations of Shakespeare’s predecessors, Thomas Kyd and Robert Greene, and give unique insights into Kyd and Greene’s bodies of work, as well as what might have caused Greene to famously deem the young Bard an “Upstart Crow.”

https://www.instagram.com/freeburian

AWARD CATEGORY # 10: Shakespeare Artificial Intelligence

AWARD WINNER: BARD AI, Google.

One of the biggest developments of 2023 was the boom in Artificial Intelligence, spurred on by the release of the ChatGPT chat bot. Shortly after ChatGPT’s debut, the major internet companies, including Microsoft and Google, hurriedly released their own artificial intelligence chat bots, with Microsoft putting out the Copilot chat bot for its Bing browser, and Google releasing its own take on an AI chat bot, Bard. Think of it as an homage to William Shakespeare that the artificial intelligence chat bot from one of the biggest media companies in the world, Google, named their chat bot after the Bard of Avon. Whether it will remain named Bard,or whether it will be subsumed into the new identity of Gemini remains to be seen.

bard.google.com

Honorable Mention: Marlowe AI for Netscape Navigator.

After the successful release of Google’s Bard AI chat bot, the pioneering internet browser, Netscape Navigator announced that it will counter by putting out the Marlowe AI chat bot, claiming that the Christopher Marlowe based artificial intelligence will be more authentic than the Bard AI, and that it might even secretly be writing the answers that the Bard AI chat bot provides. Wink wink. And this entry was absolutely NOT written by AI. Or was it??

AWARD CATEGORY # 11: Lifetime Achievement

AWARD WINNER: Paul Sugarman, Instant Shakespeare.

One of the mainstays in the world of New York Shakespeare for the last quarter century has been the Instant Shakespeare Company, a group that hosts frequent staged readings of Shakespeare’s plays in libraries and other public spaces around New York. Developed and maintained by Paul Sugarman, this group has been a training ground and a launching pad for countless Shakespeare actors in New York City, and is currently celebrating its 25th anniversary. The group combines advanced and novice performers, and counts more Shakespeare veterans in New York City (this writer included) than any other institution I know of, except perhaps Shakespeare In the Park. The readings are all free, and run with the motto, Shakespeare For Everyone! Kudos to Paul Sugarman and company on 25 years of Shakespeare in New York, which puts him in very exclusive company, and wish him and his fellow “Instants” all the best on the next leg of their wonderful journey.

https://www.facebook.com/paul.sugarman

https://www.facebook.com/groups/138463227617

AWARD CATEGORY # 12: Shakespeare Performances; Drama and Comedy

AWARD WINNER – DRAMA: Margaret: Shakespeare’s Warrior Queen, Hudson Classical Theater Company

In our prior Award categories for this article, we referenced the stage combat of Jared Kirby and NYCSS, and the gutsy performance of the injured but undaunted Katie Lerner-Lam. That all coalesced in the fantastic production of Margaret: Shakespeare’s Warrior Queen from the Hudson Classical Theater Company at the fitting location of the Soldiers and Sailors Monument in Riverside Park on the Upper West Side (link). This production combined the three parts of the Henry VI cycle, as well as the beginning of Richard III, in a fast-paced, blood-soaked, action packed open air epic. Hudson Classical is a repeat winner, having won a similar award two years ago for their excellent work. They are one of the unsung heroes of the New York Shakespeare world, providing top quality content, free of charge, and in a gorgeous outdoor environment. This show fired on all cylinders, and even with a hobbled Warrior Queen, it still ran away with our prize for top drama of 2023.

https://www.instagram.com/hudsonclassical_nyc

AWARD WINNER – COMEDY: Malvolio, Betty Shamieh, Classical Theatre of Harlem.

The resplendent production of Malvolio presented by The Classical Theatre of Harlem in the Summer of 2023 at Marcus Garvey Park in Harlem makes CTH our winner in this category for the second straight year. Last year, they took the crown with their outstanding production of Twelfth Night, directed by Carl Cofield (link), reviewed here (link).

In the Summer of 2023, CTH went out on a limb, with producer Ty Jones (link) also taking on directorial duties for the first time, with help from co-director Ian Belknap, and putting up a brand new play from playwright Betty Shamieh (link).

The new play was Malvolio, a humorous adaptation (there’s that word again) of Twelfth Night, taking the show’s characters and storyline decades into the future, to see what ever happened to Malvolio and company after he stormed off and promised revenge on the original show’s merry tricksters. The result was a joyful romp from a Shakespeare lover’s perspective, full of good humor, fun jokes and plot twists, and plenty of insider references for even the most exacting of Shakespeareans. The writing was excellent, the direction on point, and the cast amazing, anchored by last year’s scene-stealer, Allen Gilmore in his first starring role, along with John Andrew Morrison as a new character, the hilarious King Chadlio. For our one-on-one interview with playwright Betty Shamieh, click here.

https://www.instagram.com/bettyshamieh

www.cthnyc.org

AWARD CATEGORY # 13: Shakespeare Performers

AWARD WINNER: Patrick Page, All the Devils Are Here.

We have already dedicated much of this article to singing the praises of Patrick Page’s one man show, All the Devils Are Here. As good as the selection of monologues and soliloquies is, and as well as they are woven together with Page’s narrative thread filled with historical context, what takes the proverbial cake with the show is the performance of Patrick Page, himself. One of the best Shakespeare actors of the current generation, Page has created the ultimate Shakespeare workout for himself, in which he flexes his Bardian muscles, and shows his range as an actor, with moments of comedy and moments of tragedy, and everything in between. The show is like a Master Class in Shakespeare from one of the chief Shakespeareans of the day, and should not be missed before it ends in late March. For our recent review of All the Devils Are Here, click this link.

https://www.instagram.com/pagepatrick

https://www.instagram.com/allthedevilsplay

Honorable Mentions: Allen Gilmore and John Andrew Morrison, Malvolio.

One of our most awarded actors of 2022 was Allen Gilmore, who astounded with his scene-stealing turn as Malvolio in 2022’s Twelfth Night from the Classical Theatre of Harlem. His performance left such a strong impression that CTH tailored their Summer 2023 programming to him, with Betty Shamieh’s Malvolio putting Gilmore center stage in the lead role. Gilmore, being the top notch performer that he is, was excellent in his return to the role, but having been placed at the center of the action, he could no longer be the comedic scene stealer. Enter John Andrew Morrison in the role of the new character, King Chadlio, who took over Gilmore’s spot as the resident comedic scene-stealer on stage. Their pairing was outstanding, and was one of the strongest comedic combinations of 2023. For our discussion with Gilmore and Morrison about Malvolio and their terrific team-up, see here.