Bottom to Top: James Andreassi as Sir Toby, Steven Barkhimer as Feste, and Doug Lockwood as Sir Andrew. Photo by Stratton McCrady.

The best thing about ASP’s fresh take on Shakespeare’s most beloved festive gender-bender is that they take this comedy just a little bit seriously. The strongest example is the production’s version of Sir Toby Belch, the drunken uncle to the countess Olivia, who torments his niece’s butler, sleeps with her serving maid, throws raging all night parties in her kitchen and sends an idiotic suitor to woo her, simply for his own amusement.

Sir Toby is often played as a beer-bellied, blustering, buffoon. In this production, the role goes to James Andreassi, whom ASP featured as Marc Antony, in last season’s closer, “Antony and Cleopatra.” On a physical level, Andreassi looks like he’s ready to strap the armor back on at any moment. While his antics are funny, they don’t feel free-spirited. They feel heavy-spirited. His outsized appetites and his roguishness are endearing, but always just a little bit scary.  When he gets backed into a corner that just a little becomes quite a bit.

Before seeing Andreassi’s performance, it had never occurred to me how much Sir. Toby can be seen as a darker, less decorous version of the play’s Duke Orsino. Orsino, played in this production by Jason Bowen, whom ASP last cast as Othello, spends the play wallowing in the passion of his unrequited love for Olivia, who is too busy stewing in her own grief for her recently deceased brother to entertain his entreaties.

Duke Orsino is the speaker of the famous lines, “If music be the food of love, play on/Give me excess of it; that surfeiting,/The appetite may sicken, and so die.” It turns out that his appetite sickens, and so dies, just one line later. Orsino may lack Toby’s affinity for mischief making, but he is an equal in the extremes of his unquenchable desires and in his tendency toward dramatic mood swings. Just like Toby, when it looks like the doom is sealed on having his will, he threatens violence. In Bowen’s performance, the threat is half-hearted, and perhaps this is right; From Orsino, it’s just another show of melodrama.

Allyn Burrows as Malvolio. Photo by Stratton McCrady.

Sir Toby’s foil, Malvolio, Olivia’s puritanical steward, is another character who is often played a bit cartoonishly off the bat. ASP artistic director Allyn Burrows is hilarious in the role but he’s also refreshingly understated. You can tell Burrows has “found his clown.” Burrows is trim, fastidious and composed and you can imagine this wonderfully anal Malvolio, as a stretched-out version of him in is worst moments. He starts as a believable enough busy body with a proverbial rod up his derrière. Once a trick played by Sir Toby and his compatriots gives makes him drunk with imagined power, he wriggles and squirms like a child who’s had fruit loops for breakfast.

Paula Langton is wonderful as Maria, Malvolio’s underling, whose cleverness in tormenting her boss is rewarded with love and worship from Toby and friends. Sparks fly between this Toby and Maria from the first time they share the stage and Langdon’s Maria, like Andreassi’s Toby, manages to be likeable while also betraying a real sinister streak. They can be hilarious in toying with the defenseless twit, Sir Andrew Aguecheek, played as a sympathetic simpleton by Doug Lockwood.

They’ve got a pretty formidable posse as well, with Gabriel Graez as an impish Fabian, leading the charge in gulling Malvolio one minute and bowing and scraping before the Duke, the next, and the very talented character actor, Stephen Barkhimer as Feste, the traveling musician and comedian.

Barkhimer’s mysterious, trench-coated Feste is in some ways, a good step ahead of the pack. Unlike everyone else, he knows that Viola, our romantic heroine, is in fact a woman, even if he doesn’t know why she is serving Duke Orsino in drag. He knows how to make Olivia crack a smile in the depth of her despair and how to make the self-serious Duke Orsino pay him for a jest. He knows when it’s safe to join Toby’s crowd and when its best to shuffle out of the picture. But for all of his cleverness, there is a sadness to him and even a bit of pathos. As a lowly entertainer, he is in many ways impotent. He must duel with Malvolio for influence over their mistress and despite some attraction, he knows he can’t vie for her hand.

Mara Sidmore, a perpetually insightful actor, delivers as Olivia. Her pale skin and fierce blue eyes blaze forth from a jet black dress of mourning as she does her best to clench onto the safety of her grief despite a whirlwind of excitement: her uncle’s antics, her servant’s madness, her jester’s jokes and, the one thing she cannot resist, the presence of the Caesario, Viola’s male alter ego, made in the image of Sebastian, the twin brother she believes has drowned.

Omar Robinson as Antonio and Marianna Bassham as Viola. Photo by Stratton McCrady.

Marrianna Balsham’s Viola isn’t a scene a stealer. She is a laid-back go-between who brings out the extremes in her scene-mates in the way they react to her cool wit. With her even-keeled alto and floppy shoulder-length coif, she’s a bit reminiscent of Keanu Reeves. It’s a very fresh take on Viola, and the most celebrated Viola lines trip nonchalantly off her tongue as new inventions.

Director Melia Bensussen takes a few liberties in the structure of the play and some of them pay off. She helps to clarify the story of the play, for example, by reversing the order of its first two scenes.

A less canny choice is her strange device of giving disguised Viola several of her twin brother Sebastian’s scenes, with Sebastian skulking spectrally in the background. Eventually, I decided that I was supposed to suspend my disbelief and see Sebastian in her place, and that this was supposed to help trick me into seeing them as identical. This was a difficult leap to make. The moments were confusing, and puzzling over them pulled me right out of the story by which I’d been so effectively held.

Bensussen also chooses to end the play by having its cast join Feste in his final song. The song turns out to be a melancholy dirge. It’s a strange note to end on. These experiments are forgivable offenses. By and large this Twelfth is rich, insightful, and funny.

 ”Twelfth Night” plays at the Boston Center for the Arts’ Plaza Theater through October 22.

The Arab Spring has turned the eyes of the world to its remaining dictators. We’ve watched them publically flounder, grasping desperately at the myths of divine right and public support constructed over decades, while simultaneously ordering tanks and troops to crush all opposition without distinction or mercy. Hoping we’re witnessing the beginning of the end of the military despot, we’ve been mesmerized watching these once charismatic tyrants exposed and vulnerable.

Shakespeare wrote about this. “Richard III,” is thought to be one his earliest and most popularly successful plays.  It’s title character uses smirking soliloquies to make us his accomplices as he charms and butchers his way to the crown, goes mad trying to hold on to the reins of power and swiftly loses what he so audaciously claimed. It’s the perfect play for examining the methods, motivations and madness of such men, but also our own fascinations with them.

One could not ask for a more compelling, inventive or effecting production than the one on offer from England’s award-winning Shakespeare troupe, Propeller , now playing at the Huntington. While Richard Clothier’s broad-shouldered, toothy-grinned, fast talking sociopath is an imposing and magnificent Richard III, but it’s equaled by the portrayal of the machine he comes to oversee.

Propeller’s English royals drink their celebratory wine from i.v. pouches and when they’re vowing a pact of loyalty, they down vials of one another’s royal blood. A chorus of underlings who are masked in ragged bandages and costumed in hospital whites does their bidding. Models of British efficiency, these ghouls sing jaunty English hymns in four-part harmonies as they carry out their orders with drills, hooks and chainsaws. This business is creepy as hell, but its horror and gore is so over-the-top as to be campy. An intentional gallows humor makes it palatable and even entertaining.

You never forget you’re in a theatrical world in this Richard. For one thing, Propeller, like the King’s Men, is an all male troupe, so you’re treated to a drag Lady Anne and Queen Margaret. These parts, however, are not played for camp. In the very best scenes, you forget.  For another thing, you get surprising turns like the use of puppets to portray the young princes whom Richard imprisons in the tower. They effect is both convincing to the imagination and useful as commentary.

The trick of Richard III is that it has no likable characters, only amusing characters. In the Propeller version, this even holds true for Edward, the play’s liberator, whose violence in the name of freedom for tyranny has to give us some pause.

Directed by Edward Hall, adapted by Edward Hall and Roger Warren and designed by Michael Pavelka, “Richard III” is presented by the B.U. School of Theatre in association with the Huntington Theatre Company. It plays at the B.U. Theatre through June 19, in repertory with “Comedy of Errors.”

It’s got to be fast on its feet and full of slapstick, site gags and as must shtick as can be mustered to keep it popping.  Thought to be Shakespeare’s first stab at the genre, “Comedy of Errors” is built on the outlandish premise that two sets of separated identical twins with the same names—two servants and their two masters—land on the same shore on the same day, haplessly stirring up all kinds of passions. The masters break vows and break hearts and the servants nearly get their brains broken in with blows. While rife with possibilities, it’s a pretty goofy premise and the play’s jokes are not necessarily helped along by heightened and archaic language. But the Propellor gets it. The award-winning English Shakespeare troupe turns out a crowd-pleaser by treating the play more like folk art than fine art. Its cartoon-like characters would almost equally be at home in an English pantomime as they are flinging about blank verse. Certainly they know how to speak the speech, they just never allow it to become precious, spitting out rhetoric, puns and rhymes like they’re simply talking trash. Some easy laughs are born from the fact that Propeller is all male. Their female characters are the kinds of wonderful nightmares in drag who could easily have stepped out of a Kids in the Hall sketch. But the old cross-dressing bit is just one of the comedic tools in its impressive bag of tricks. The troupe brings “Comedy of Errors” to a run-down Mexican village complete with errant chicken squawks and peopled by a sombrero sporting mariachi pick-up band as a chorus. The play’s minor characters get to riff and strut to their hearts’ content. One plot point hinges on the selling of an expensive chain, and in this version its vendor is an incensed pawnshop sleaze, resplendent in silver and gold lamé. Another twist brings a religious exorcist to the stage who here appears as flamboyant tent-show revival preacher. As with the best comedies, it’s unmistakable that these actors are having the times of their lives with these hammy parts and such fun is contagious. Remarkably, the same can be said of the bloody, bloody “Richard III“ which Propeller is performing in repertory with this comedy. To get the full effect of this troupes’ ingenuity and skill, see both if you possibly can. Directed by Edward Hall and designed by Michael Pavelka, “The Comedy of Errors” is presented by the B.U. Department of Theatre in association with the Huntington Theatre Company. It plays at the B.U. Theatre through June 19.

“Cymbeline” can feel like Shakespearean “Mad Libs.” You’ve got your lady marrying against her angry Dad’s will. There’s a deception that makes her man wrongly and murderously jealous. The girl dresses as a guy and flees from the court into the woods. There’s a sleeping potion that makes everyone think she’s dead—it’s a crowded bag of familiar tricks.

Plus there’s an evil queen, an evil queen’s evil son, a conflicted servant, a disgraced and disguised former advisor, some hidden princes and a full-on inter-kingdom war. Even in hands as capable as A.S.P.’s, it’s a little confusing, and more so with their propensity for double and triple casting.

Some characters get lost. In fact some of the best ones mysteriously disappear for long stretches, as if they were forgotten or the author just got tired of writing them—like Iachimo (Neil McGarry), who bets the dashing Posthumus Leonatus (De’Lon Grant) he can prove to him that Imogen (Brooke Hardman), his new wife, is unfaithful. Iachimo hides in a treasure chest he has delivered to her and then studies her body and steals her ring while she’s asleep. Then there’s the aforementioned evil queen (Marya Lowry), who seems like the central character of the first couple of acts. Her final fate, suffered offstage is merely summarized in a finale in which major revelations are piled on the side of the road in heaps.

How does Actors’ Shakespeare Project deal with this play’s many challenges in this, the opening production of their Winter Festival? By not taking it too seriously. From the moment actress Marya Lowry wafts through the Davis Square storefront where the festival is staged, opening and closing a tinkling music box as she lilts a casual curtain speech, it’s pretty clear things aren’t going to get too heavy.

Lowry and the full cast of seven versatile actors, dressed in flattering snowy white garb, buoy this difficult play with lighthearted charm. They wear their characters lightly, announcing each act and scene they are about to present, and stepping aside after each exit to serve as low-tech sound-effect-and-music-makers, as if they’re presenting the broadcast of a radio show for a live studio audience.

Essentially, director Doug Lockwood’s concept works to the extent that its cast maintains its breeziness. It works best when they indulge in full on goofy satire. It falters when they lose themselves and play for pathos. It’s not that these talented actors can’t handle the drama—far from it, it’s just that the way things are framed, the stakes aren’t there.

If you’re looking for a fully realized Shakespearean masterpiece, maybe wait to see how A.S.P. does with Antony and Cleopatra this spring, but if you’re in the mood for a bit of a romp with some clever (if familiar) plot devices and a dusting of fine poetry, check out this fresh take on a Shakespearean B-side.

Cymbeline plays through February 20 at the Storefront on Elm, 255 Elm Street, Davis Square, Somerville.

When I heard that Julie Taymor was making “The Tempest,” the most magic and pageant-filled play in Shakespeare’s canon, I immediately thought: Wow! Puppets! Psychedelic animation! A surrealistic special effects bonanza with visual poetry to complement the verse…”

Well, there are some wonderful sets and a couple of neat tricks, and also the odd bits of very cheesy CGI, but for the most part, Taymor has built her film with the values of theatrical purist, centered around a masterful ensemble cast and their interpretations of the text.

It’s hard to argue with putting the text and the characters front in center in a Shakespeare production—but with “The Tempest” on screen, there are some tricky decisions.  This is a play that opens with a shipwreck created through dialogue—a treat in a playhouse but unnecessary in a film when you can show a shipwreck more vividly than it can be described. It’s a play with a first act overburdened with relentless exposition. Taymor largely rejects the obvious cinematic solution to this challenge, flashbacks with voice-overs, in favor of real-time speeches.

“The Tempest,” thought to be written at the end of Shakespeare’s career partly around a desire to showcase his mastery of stagecraft, features long interludes in which spirits create elaborate visual illusions to amaze, delight and terrify. These bits get shockingly little attention from a director known for her capacity to dazzle visually. She seems only to be focused on plot.

Taymor’s main impetus for the film is the casting of Helen Mirren as the all-powerful magician, Prospero, or Prospera as portrayed by the Dame. There is no particularly provocative payoff to changing the gender of this domineering patriarch. Nothing much is pushed, twisted or elucidated in the text, but plenty is lost: the idea of Miranda growing up without female role models, with notions that men can only be Prospero’s (conquering, cloistering, tyrant/protectors) or Calibans (feral would-be rapists) and the idea of European logoscentricity defeating/enslaving the chaotic natural world once ruled by the Sycorax, the (mystical female) witch.

The point of the casting choice seems to be simply: Helen Mirren is remarkable at acting Shakespeare, she’s the right age to play this part, and it would be cool to see her interpretation. Fair enough on all counts. She is wonderful in creating a Prospera who is supremely confident in her ability to inflict her will through magic but conflicted about just when and how to do so.

Mirren is surrounded by a universally wonderful cast. As Prospera’s daughter Miranda, Felicity Jones exhibits a perfect blend of subtle frustration with her overbearing mother, a gentle sensitivity to the plights of all those around her and, the character’s defining trait: pure wonder, without falling into the trap of cloying naïveté.  As her suitor, Ferdinand, Reeve Carney plays a twerpish but endearing, slightly awkward, sheltered teen, torn between his nice-guy nature and the example of the entitled noble, set by his courtier elders.

The most delightful surprises from the cast are the inspired performances by Chris Cooper and Alan Cumming, who resurrect the story’s most pure villains, Antonio and Sebastian, from sneering caricatures, to a genuine Cassius and the genuinely amusing, hapless jester upon whom he preys.  They fix their plots upon a wonderful King Alonso in David Straithairn, at once regal in his bearing and petulant in his self-absorption, and are well foiled by Tom Conti’s oppressively good-natured old idealist, Gonzalo.

Equally inspired is the selection of Russell Brand to play Trinculo, the play’s one character who is actually a fool by trade. Brand plays the role as a crazed cockney marionette.  He and Alfred Molina as Stephano the drunken butler, balance buffoonery with glimpses of genuine scariness in their willingness to become slave masters to Caliban and would-be-usurpers of Prospera, mirroring the postures of Sebastian toward Alonso, Alonso toward Prospera and arguably, Prospera herself toward Caliban. Funny as Brand and Molina are though, there is oddness in the pacing of their scenes. You’re waiting for them to go all the way out there into the slapstick you see them as capable of, and yet somehow they seem restrained by a gesture toward earnestness.

As all modern students of “The Tempest” know, it’s Caliban who holds the key to the play’s morality. The more sympathetic he is the less so is his master, and in the modern world, the more identifiable he is with the victims of imperialist colonialism, the more sympathetic he becomes. Beninean actor, Djimon Hounso goes the sympathy route, but his performance is far from uncomplicated. Certainly, he enacts the Western idea of the exotic other, savage, in touch with nature but awed and baffled by technology (here, magic), not quite trust-worthy but overly put-upon. Mirren’s Prospera wants to see him as a pure and dangerous villain and yet is clearly unsettled by the tyranny he provokes in her.

Taymor writes further complications on her Caliban’s skin. It is striped with stings and with whip lashes, the unambiguously evil marks of the slave master.  It is African black with large patches of pale, almost albino white. These patches remind one of lentigo, raising the idea that Caliban’s European whiteness as a kind of disease or condition. Upon closer inspection though it’s not just his skin, you can see that the white side of Caliban’s face surrounds a blue eye in contrast to the brown one on the other side, echoing Prospera’s description of his mother as a “blue-eyed hag.”

Ben Whisaw, as Caliban’s counterpart, Ariel, is the film’s one casualty to special effects. He is played as not merely androgynous, with strategically crossed legs, a blurred midsection, male facial features and the occasional appearance of slight breasts, but as a cipher, flickering translucently or appearing in pool of water, distinctly inhuman and almost neutral in expression and desire. Some of the Ariel effects are quite cool. He’s great divided into tiny particles or taking the form of a vengeful harpy. At other times though, he comes off as a bit camp, a bit Doctor Who, flying halteringly through the air with his shimmering blue bottom.

Plotwise, the greatest challenge of the “The Tempest” is it’s apparent lack of conflict. Prospero (or Prospera) always has the situation firmly in hand. Nothing ever really threatens this peerless protagonist so there can be little tension. In this production, Taymor and Mirren make it clear that the conflict is internal. After years of nursing resentment and loss, Prospera has her charges and her enemies right where she wants them. The question is, what should she do with them?

I found this to be a revelation, and it helped me answer one of the questions I inevitably ask myself upon the immerging of a new Shakespeare movie: Am I ok with this film being shown in high school and even college English classrooms, as it inevitable will be?  My answer here is “yes.” You get the story, you get the language, you get the characters, the conflicts, you even get the jokes.

The secondly question I ask myself is: Does this feel like definitive film version of this play for this generation?” My answer here is “no.” I want an equally accessible  “Tempest” with more filmic choices, and frankly, as wonderful as Mirren’s performance is, with a male Prospero. In fact, having seen and for the most part enjoyed this film, I feel twice as eager for the next version to emerge.

It’s words not swords that that do the work for Actors’ Shakespeare Project as they take you through “Henry IV,” the two-part war chronicle (parts I and II play in repertory), which they’ve subtitled “The Coveted Crown.”

The Henrys are hard. There are a lot of courtiers and rebels who are difficult to keep straight, especially without the foreknowledge of the conflict that Shakespeare’s audience had, and especially with A.S.P.’s propensity for triple casting their actors.  Then there’s the jokes; the Henrys are chalked full of witty tavern banter, but because it’s in Elizabethan slang it’s often particularly difficult to keep up with.

Fortunately, the Henry’s are also chalked full of rewards of which this company takes advantage. Foremost is the language, which is always the star of an A.S.P. production. At the heart of the Henry’s is the complex relationship between Prince Hal (later Henry V) and his two father figures, Bolingbroke (aka Henry IV, the current king of England and Hal’s actual biological father) and Falstaff, the wayward, aging knight who dominates the local low-life bar at which Prince Hal likes to go slumming.

Resident acting company member, Bill Barclay, plays this production’s Hal and fits the image well with his tall, lean physique and clean-cut prep school looks. At times Barclay a bit too far into his own head, not quite enough on edge for the scheming Hal who is quick to anger at Falstaff and blush at his father’s chastisements—but Barclay is charming, masterful with the poetry and clear in presenting Hal’s arch from a rebellious over-cocky gad-about to a young leader focused on honor and duty.

With his booming bass and brooding visage, Joel Colodner is nothing short of haunting as Hal’s father, the rebel turned troubled ruler, always wary that his past is not behind him, but looms ready to turn the wheel of fate back around.

The talented comic actor, Robert Walsh is equally memorable as Falstaff. Walsh is a great storyteller and his wry expressions and punchy cadence endow his Falstaff with the appropriate oversized charm and swagger. You don’t need to get all the jokes. You get the character, and it’s a great one. Walsh gets the aid of a formidable paunch ensconced in velvet and a poofed up shock of white hair rising over his rubbery brow. He looks like a bloated cross between Kenny Rogers and Tom Waits.

Walsh also gets the aid of some great sidemen (and women), most notably company members Bobby Steinbach as Mistress Quickly, the tawdry old barmaid who loves him, and Michael Forden Walker, who plays the lowlife Falstaff antagonist, Poins, as a greaser with an itchy dagger finger.

Outside of the court of Bolingbroke and the Tavern of Falstaff, the first part of Henry IV stars Hotspur, Hal’s foil, who, while he is an enemy to Hal’s father, is admired of the king as a man of honor and action, the embodiment of a solider. Hal has decided to have fun while he’s still young, to hang out with rabble and cultivate an impression that he’s lazy, sinful and soft, for the purpose, he claims in a soliloquy, of lowering expectations to make his rise to power that much more impressive.

Hotspur, meanwhile has no patience for games of any kind—diplomacy and politics included. In this production, Hotspur is played by A.S.P. artistic director, Allyn Burrows. Burrows’ white hair is vastly inappropriate for the role of the young gallant, but his ceaseless, almost manic energy compensates; his Hotspur is extremely entertaining.

While Henry IV Part I is about bluffing, game-playing, lying and acting (in both senses), Part II, while still rife with comic relief, is about life during more serious times. It’s about transition and loss. The war is ratcheting up which means Hal has less time to waste. His true father is in waning health and his surrogate father, the Lord of Misrule, must spend more time on the battlefield, where he has never belonged.

Some great new characters are added into the mix in Part II, including the formidable Lord Chief Justice, played stoic and cool by Jonathan Louis Dent. He has the king’s ear, rides hot on Falstaff’s tail and indirectly forces Hal to choose one of the sides—rule or misrule—that he has been straddling throughout his young life.

In addition to new enemies, Falstaff gets a host of new friends, most notably, Justice Shallow (the very funny Steven Barkhimer) an ancient drinking companion with whom he has “heard the chimes of midnight. Shallow helps Falstaff conscript his battalion of the old and the crippled who cannot pay their way out of service, and he promised a high rank in the new world order to come when Falstaff’s surrogate son achieves the throne.

For his part, Hal stars in one of the most memorable scenes in all of Shakespeare, when he stands by his father’s deathbed and, equivocating all the while, cannot keep his eyes or his hands off of the crown, only to be caught by his father who, not quite dead yet, fears that he is nothing but an obstacle in the eyes of his heir. Hal’s greatest challenge as an orator is to bring his father around to the opposite view during the last moments of his life.

Director Patrick Swanson and Adaptor Robert Walsh naturally take some liberties in staging this challenging two-part epic. One that works, is the decision to cast Bobbie Steinbach as a musical chorus with some original verses that invite us into the world of the play and thank us at it’s conclusion. Steinbeck’s narrator subsumes the role of Rumor, used by Shakespeare to preface Part II.

A less helpful choice is that to graft the last scene of “Richard II” (“Henry IV’s” prequel) to the beginning of Part I and the first scene of “Henry V” (Henry IV’s sequel) to the end of Part II. While these are both great scenes and contain much that comments on the action and themes of the Henry IV plays, they turn out to be less impactful when extracted from their original contexts. “Richard II’s” coronation scene works as the culmination of that play’s tension, and the war declaration scene from “Henry V” works best as a provocation to it’s later action. It’s anticlimactic as an ending. More than that though, these plays are simply long enough that they could have used more subtraction and less addition.

In the end though, what matters, what lingers when all the words are spoken and the exits made, are memories of the solemn Bolingbroke, the calculating Hal, the fiery Hotspur, the bombastic and invincibly charming Falstaff and all of the best words and exploits of their cronies and foes. Commit to A.S.P.’s Henry’s and you will gain these rich memories.

“Henry IV Parts I & II: The Coveted Crown” play in Repertory at Fort Point Channel’s Midway Studios through November 21.

It’s hard to quibble too much about free Shakespeare in a public park under the stars.  It’s a pleasure to join an audience, far more diverse than the average ticket buyers and theater subscribers, in rapt attention to forceful poetry. The laughter, the outbursts of frustration wrought by dramatic irony, and the gasps of recognition are every bit as fun to observe as the "traffic of our stage." "Othello" is a great choice of plays too; No director’s note is needed to argue that Shakespeare’s take on racial politics, manipulation and romantic jealousy is as timely today as the day it was first performed.

Still, knowing how strong the material is, it’s not hard to wish for a production with more luster. While it holds audience attention, trotting at a brisk pace with excellent elocution, this one is too breezy and static. There’s no sense of risk or menace, no emotional heft. It’s a tragedy that feels like a comedy, and in fact, its characters are more often laughed at than pitied for calling the satanic Iago (James Waterston), "honest."

Part of the problem here seems to be a lack of vision from director, Steve Maler. His actors, most of whom speak in their natural accents while others affect an antique faux British formality, are clad in 1940′s dress for reasons that are never made evident. They perform in front large stone-looking wall with an abstract indentation and a blue pallor, suggesting, well, very little really. His main players maintain an even level of emotion, with plenty of shouting and pacing throughout, while his supporting cast seems awkwardly restrained, never quite knowing how much improvised vocalization or freedom of movement is appropriate for the celebration of a military victory or a night out at the bar.

The standout in the cast is the talented Commonwealth veteran and Trinity Rep. member, Fred Sullivan, Jr., who brings a Jacky Gleanson-esque bluster to the role of Barbantio, the bigoted Venetian senator who demands legal action from the Duke (John McGinnis) when upon learning that his daughter Desdemona (Marianna Bassham) has taken up with Othello, (Seth Gilliam), a dark-skinned outsider. The rest are watchable enough, but never seems to swing for the rafters.

"Othello" is an exercise in seduction. The title character has overcome his status as a a distrusted minority to gain the role of general at a time of war and the hand of Desdemona, a graceful beauty from a prominent white family, viewed by Venetians as "perfection." His charm is a mix of confidence and humility that inspires his allies while driving his enemies to hysteria. The audience must love Othello in order to feel the tragedy that ensues when his passions are released from their stoic’s cage and cruelly misdirected by Iago. For his part, the wily Iago must be an even greater seducer. He must woo Barbantio’s wrath, Roderigo’s purse, Othello’s innermost trust and, most crucially, he must woo the audience, who love Othello, as accomplices in the hero’s undoing. How will he do it? Partly by being the one character who takes us into his confidence, partly because he’s just so damned clever, and partly because he revels in his work, and his glee at winning foils Othello’s disciplined restraint.

Commonwealth’s "Othello" is a bit short on seduction. Gilliam’s general is likable enough, but he’s a bit too casual and free to really be commanding or to build to a boil. Bassham’s Desdemona certainly looks the part with her blonde hair and pale, statuesque form wrapped in a golden gown, but her manner is a bit brash for an embodiment of grace. Waterston’s Iago is a bit frantic. He does a lot of cavorting, and, speaking in his voice’s upper register, he squeaks when over-excited. He does a fine job of charming his victims and convincing us of his sliminess, but what he never does, is stop and let us in. This is a problem, because you can’t really grasp what’s so powerfully frightening about Iago if you don’t fall prey to his charm.

So there are plenty of improvements to be wished for, but, in the end, it’s still "Othello," and it’s still offered for free under the stars, on a grassy lawn, in the middle of the city. It’s still not a bad way to spend an August evening in Boston.

The Commonwealth Shakespeare Company’s "Othello" plays on Boston Common through August 15.

BOSTON

Cherry Smoke

Company: Gurentt Theatre Project

Genre: New Drama

Dates: July 9-24

Venue:

Boston Playwrights Theater
949 Commonwealth Avenue

Boston, 02215

(866) 811-4111

Grimm

by John ADEkoje, Lydia R. Diamond, Marcus Gardley, Kristen Greenidge, John Kuntz, Melinda Lopez

Company: Company One

Genre: New Drama

Dates: July 16-August 10

Venue:

Roberts Studio Theater

Boston Center for the Arts

539 Tremont Street

Boston, MA 02116

(617) 426-5000

Othello

by William Shakespeare

Company: Commonwealth Shakespeare Company

Genre: Classical Tragedy

Dates: July 22-August 15

Venue:

Boston Common

617-426-0863

CAMBRIDGE

Conni’s Avant Garde Restaurant

by The Avantguardists

Genre: Experimental Dinner Theater

Dates: July 11, 18, 21 and August 1

Venue:

Club Oberon

2 Arrow Street

Cambridge, MA 02138

(617) 496-8004

The Hound of the Baskervilles

by Stephen Canny & John Nicholson

Company: Central Square Theatre

Genre: Mystery

Dates: July 22-August 22

Venue:

Central Square Theatre

450 Massachusetts Avenue
Cambridge, MA 02139

(617) 576-9278

To send corrections or request a listing, contact our Theater Editor at jwrabin@gmail.com

Most scholars peg the Bard’s birthday at April 23, but then again depending on who you read, he was a team, an earl, a glover’s son, a queen or Bacon.

All in all, let’s forgive Boston’s Actors’ Shakespeare Project for celebrating the (probably) 456th birthday of The Artist Formerly Known As Shakespeare (or Shakespear, or Shagspere or Shaxberd) this Saturday in Cambridge. Commencing at 3 p.m., the Shakespearean shindig is conveniently located at John Harvard’s Brew House, so you can drink deep while you geek hard.

Other friends of the Bard on hand will include Orfeo Group, the Revels, Mass Mouth and Improv Boston. Groundlings can expect some performances form these groups, There will be a Shakespeare SLAM—an open mike for monologuers and sonneteers—a community reading of the balcony scene from "Romeo and Juliet."

An A.S.P. press release further reports that "The Harvard Square Business Association and the Mayor of Cambridge will also be on hand to read the City Council resolution for the day."

The groups had originally planned a parade across the city, but alas, "The rain, it raineth every day" (and weather forecasts have convinced them to keep things indoors).

Rain or shine, it should be a good day for cakes and ale—and ham.

A Boston native, actor and director Allyn Burrows, has made his way home. “It was the subway,” he says, that brought him back from New York. “Too much time underground.”

Burrows graduated from Boston University and began his career in theater with stints at the Lyric in Boston, the A.R.T. in Cambridge, the Merrimack Rep. in Lowell and the New Rep. in Watertown before heading to New York where he worked off-Broadway and eventually toured regional theaters around the country.

At the beginning of March, Burrows was named Artistic Director of Boston’s Actors’ Shakespeare Project, after serving as interim Artistic Director during a 5-month national search.

"Allyn embodies the aesthetic and working vision of A.S.P.," said search committee chair and A.S.P. board member, Cynthia Good, in a March 2 press release. "He comes to us understanding the vibrancy of the language of Shakespeare and the collaborative nature of our work with the company and the community. He will help us move into the next phase of our future."

Burrows, an Eliot Award Winner, comes to the A.S.P. to listen and be heard—mostly, he suggests, to listen. “I cut my teeth at Shakespeare and Company he says, referring to the Massachusetts institution in the Berkshires, “I want to take the best parts of that and bring it here. To emphasize that.”

"That," for Burrows, is a collaborative actor-director stake holding, in A.S.P.’s terms, "a resident acting company," a picture which Burrows paints as a family with raucous round-table dinners and no one player holding the conch. “After all, it was Hemmings and Condell who gave us Shakespeare in the first place,” says Burrows, citing the friends and former stage managers of Shakespeare who published the "first folio" after his death. ¨19 heads," he adds, "are better than one.”

Since 2004, a spirit of collaboration has ruled Actor’s Shakespeare Project. This plays out not only internally, but also by involving groups like Boston’s Arts Academy in their productions and by performing in both traditional and non-tradition theater spaces in different neighborhoods throughout the city in an attempt to bring people together.

“It’s about the clarity of storytelling in different venues, unusual venues,” Burrows explains, “The story has to involve the space and the audience has to be a major player in it.” Of course not any space will do (“like are there bathrooms?”), but Burrows yields little else in his approach. His aesthetic is minimalistic, and he seeks above all to bind audiences to the spell of Shakespeare’s words. “We are a voice and text based company. Our productions rely on the relationships occurring on stage.”

For his first season as Artistic Director, Burrows reports “a tight, tight schedule — a huge chunk of meat to be gnawing on.” The feast begins with a rich trio of histories. “The time is right for histories," he explains. "Maybe it has to do with the president we have in the white house or maybe we just have more time to think about things.”

At present, Burrows is looking forward to stepping into the title role in the “Timon of Athens” next month. “Its a great story,” he says, “Timon goes to the woods, subsists on roots and dies a wretched death in a cave.”

It sounds like an ominous journey, but perhaps it beats the New York subways.

I’ve never seen an Othello this smooth.

Taking on the title role in this solid, often powerful staging from Actors’ Shakespeare Project, Jason Bowen, is a convincing commanding officer—but he’s far more diplomat than brooding hulk—not the usual reverberate bass to fill the ample boots of the Moor of Venice.

With an upright carriage and an upturned chin, Bowen’s Othello measures his movements, looks his converser squarely in the eye, flashes a winning smile when it serves him, and seems to choose his words to the degree that poetry seems plausible.

In other words he is perfectly in control—until he isn’t.

Iago, the infamous architect of his downfall, is played here by Ken Cheeseman, who,

broad-shouldered and lanky in a brown leather jacket and military fatigues, bestrides his castmates like a colossus.

Iago is our master of ceremonies for the evening, a task that Cheeseman discharges with great alacrity and a nimble tongue. He is convincing as a casually charismatic, two-faced flatterer—but there is something missing. He’s a little too charming. Sure he’s evil, but he’s not—as this great villain should be—the kind of sociopath that makes your skin crawl, that makes you horribly uncomfortable until he leaves the stage. Nor does he steal the show, as an Iago often can, by inducing the kind of poetic Stockholm Syndrome that makes you root for him in spite of yourself. Cheeseman’s Iago works, but is more efficient than anything else.

Staged by director, Judy Braha, in the South End’s Villa Victoria Center for the Arts, a funky, modern-looking former church with a spiral staircase and a balcony, the play is set in a Venice and Cyprus of "the Near Future." It’s an amorphous setting, which turns out to mean a police state in which soldiers wield riot shields and batons. With a minimalist set, and a soundtrack of eerie ambient music to ratchet up the tension, this concept stays out of the way enough to frame the play nicely.

With his na¯ve young accomplice Rodrigo (played for sympathy more than laughs by Doug Lockwood), Iago wastes no time in making mischief, anonymously informing Barantia (normally Barbantio, but a mother in this version, played by Bobbie Steinbach) that her daughter, Desdemona (the charming and understated Brooke Hardman), has eloped with Othello. This is scandalous not only because the wedding takes place without parental consent, but also because Othello is a Moor, a black man, and his winning of Desdemona is portrayed as abduction.

Barbantia takes her fury to the Duke, a character who is usually a mere functionary in the plot, but who, played masterfully by Paula Langton in a Hillaryesque pants suit, immerges as a compelling politician forced to make some quick calculations. Loyal as she is to the senator, Othello’s full powers of persuasion are on display and so the Duke ultimately sides with the outsider-turned-military hero. Together they diffuse the conflict. But Iago is already busy at work on phase two. He hates Othello, in part because of rumors that his own wife, Emilia (a second role for the impressive Paula Langdon, disguised in rags), has also succumbed to Othello’s charms. Iago also hates the generally esteemed Michael Cassio, Othello’s right-hand man, (played here with more earnestness than dash by Michael Forden Walker), mainly because Cassio has surpassed him in rank.

Iago’s plot to take down both at once is hatched with only we, the audience as knowing accomplices. Under the guise of true loyalty, he will, with feigned reluctance, convince Othello that Desdemona and Cassio are having an affair. The ingenious details, all based upon an astute assessment of each character’s principle weakness, will be discovered as he goes. But he knows from the start that he will get Cassio’s place and provoke Othello to betray his stoic image, and he knows that many are just waiting for the Moor to prove himself an unworthy match for his highborn white wife.

As usual, this Actors’ Shakespeare Project production places its heaviest weight on the words, a wise decision when dealing with one of the undisputedly greatest scripts of all time. It’s a story of ambition and envy that asks just what people are willing to believe and why. It has an almost omnipotent villain whose cunning in treachery can’t help but make you smile before you cringe, and it has a great tragic hero—the more he makes you admire him, the more he shatters your heart. In this production Bowen certainly finds ways to do both.

Othello plays through April 4 at the Villa Victoria Center for the Arts.

Both the American Repertory Theater and the Huntington Theatre Company are pulling out the big guns, or rather the big pens (which are mightier) to promote their December offerings.

On December 5, at 11 a.m. in the Loeb Theater, the A.R.T. promises a "Shakespeare Explosion" in support of Shakespeare Exploded, its current series of far-out adaptations which includes musical theater, interactive dance pieces and a staged reading of a new Robert Brustein play.

This “explosion” comes in the form of a panel discussion on Shakespeare and modern culture featuring the author of the acclaimed book by that name, Harvard professor, Marjorie Garber. Garber will be joined by Oskar Eustis, Artistic Director of the Publik Theater and by new A.R.T. Artistic Director, Diane Paulus.

A matinee of The Best of Both Worlds, Paulus’s gospel music-packed adaption of The Winter’s Tale, will follow the talk. While the panel is free to the public, tickets to the play are sold separately.

Further on down the Charles the next day, the Huntington has got some ballistics of its own to discuss. At 4:30 p.m., Paula Vogel, the Pulitzer prize-winning playwright (“How I Learned to Drive,” 1998) known for illustrating sexual abuse and dysfunction in lively comedies, comes to the Huntington’s B.U. Theater to plug their staging of her decidedly more tame sounding new work, “A Civil War Christmas: An American Musical Celebration.”

"Taking place on Christmas Eve 1864, stories of a collection of characters including President Abraham Lincoln and his wife are woven into an American tapestry, showing us that the gladness of one’s heart is the greatest gift of all. This production includes beloved holiday music and will be enhanced by local choirs caroling before each performance," a press release reads.

Vogel will be joined at the Huntington’s "Humanities Forum," by fellow Pulitzer prize-winner (“No Ordinary Time: Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt: The Home Front in World War II,” 1995) presidential historian Doris Kearns Goodwin. Goodwin, a Concord resident and former Harvard professor, is no stranger to the panel circuit having appeared ubiquitously on television in support of her acclaimed book, Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln. The work has often been credited with inspiring some of President Obama’s cabinet choices, most notably Hillary Clinton for Secretary of State. Goodwin is no stranger to theater: her husband, former John F. Kennedy speechwriter Robert Goodwin, authored the play, Two Men of Florence, which premiered at the Huntington last March.

Vogel and Goodwin will speak immediately following the 2:00PM matinee of the show. As with the A.R.T talk, the panel is free to the public, but tickets to the performance are sold separately.

Our two university-backed companies are making it clear: theater in the Hub means getting some cultchah with your aht.

The Phoenix and the Turtle is an allegorical poem about the death of ideal love. It is widely considered to be one of William Shakespeare’s most obscure works.

The Phoenix and the Turtle

Let the bird of loudest lay,
On the sole Arabian tree,
Herald sad and trumpet be,
To whose sound chaste wings obey.
But thou shrieking harbinger,
Foul precurrer of the fiend,
Augur of the fever’s end,
To this troop come thou not near.
From this session interdict
Every fowl of tyrant wing,
Save the eagle, feather’d king:
Keep the obsequy so strict.
Let the priest in surplice-white
That defunctive music can,
Be the death-divining swan,
Lest the requiem lack his right.
And thou treble-dated crow,
That thy sable gender makest
With the breath thou givest and takest,
‘Mongst our mourners shalt thou go.
Here the anthem doth commence:
Love and constancy is dead:
Phoenix and the turtle fled
In a mutual flame from hence.
So they loved, as love in twain
Had the essence but in one;
Two distincts, division none:
Number there in love was slain.
Hearts remote, yet not asunder;
Distance, and no space was seen
‘Twixt the turtle and his queen:
But in them it were a wonder.
So between them love did shine,
That the turtle saw his right
Flaming in the phoenix’ sight;
Either was the other’s mine.
Property was thus appall’d,
That the self was not the same;
Single nature’s double name
Neither two nor one was call’d.
Reason, in itself confounded,
Saw division grow together;
To themselves yet either neither,
Simple were so well compounded,
That it cried, ‘How true a twain
Seemeth this concordant one!
Love hath reason, reason none,
If what parts can so remain.’
Whereupon it made this throne
To the phoenix and the dove,
Co-supremes and stars of love,
As chorus to their tragic scene.

“My first assignment for finals in drama class was Shakespeare and the teacher said I couldn’t do it because a Latino wouldn’t do it well. I remember practicing with a little tape recorder, and he ended up giving me an A. He said that I was good, but that I should go to Mexico to do soaps because as an actor I wouldn’t make it in the U.S.,” recalls Hector Luis Bustamante talking to Blast recently.

That teacher is probably biting his tongue now because Bustamante, like many other Latino actors, is making it in the U.S. His latest gig casts him as Pedro Vera in Lifetime Network’s Little Girl Lost: The Delimar Vera Story. He is also Luis Aramboles, opposite Michael Chiklis and Walton Goggins on FX’s hit series The Shield and, oh yeah, his 30-plus episodes as a heartthrob on NBC’s soap Passions.

“The teacher said to me that I had an accent, and I tried to get rid of it, but later I realized my accent is me and its not gonna change. He had his favorites in class and I speculate I wasn’t one,” Bustamante chuckled.

A native of Medellin, Colombia, Bustamante moved to America when he was 12. His family settled in New Jersey, and he became an East Coast boy. As he got used to life in the North, the actor also became interested in the television show I Love Lucy where, as he explained, it was the first time he saw a Hispanic man in an American show. “Something in me said ‘wow that’s what I want to do.’”

Like so many other boys, he first joined drama class in high school as an attempt to meet a pretty girl. As he got to rehearse and learn more about acting, Bustamante took things seriously, which included the teacher’s comments. Although he never said it out loud, the criticism made Bustamante think he would never be a good actor. When senior year came and went, he chose to study graphic design at Parsons School of Design in New York.

“I was rushed and I decided to do graphic design until I was ready to do an audition thinking to myself ‘oh my god what am I doing?’ and I told people,” he said. “They said ‘you’re crazy’ and I became a corporate investigator and did that for 10 years instead.”

Sudden twist? Yes and no. By the late 90s, Bustamante was doubtful he could be a good actor, but at the same time he yearned to act. Under everybody’s radar he lobbied for a move to the West Coast, while going home at night and watching T.V. thinking “man, one day,” he said.

“I ended up getting the job in San Francisco and it wasn’t until a couple of months later that I stumbled into an advertising for an audition. It was for a Latino actor and I said “wow they want an accent,” so I knew I could’ve done this since long ago,” said Bustamante.

With the flier, the then private investigator went home and researched what he had to do to get to Los Angeles and not fail in the business. Without caring about comments he set goals for himself. He enrolled in acting classes at Shelton’s Actors’ Studio and within a year, he started hitting up auditions.

While in the bay area, Bustamante got his first major television role, appearing on CBS’s The Agency, playing the head of the Colombian police. His television credits include roles on NYPD Blue, Monk, Without A Trace, 24 and Heroes.

“In the spring of 2003 I got a TV show and it was the same year I flew to NY to resign [as an investigator]. My boss was crazy over it and he even said ‘sleep it off and come back tomorrow’. I slept it off and the next day I came in and had my resignation signed off,” he said.

His resignation came with an explanation to his direct supervisor too, who after hearing that Bustamante acted on his days off said, “Really? You’re on TV?”

“My boss was like me, interested in the industry,” he said. “When I was working I got a call from him saying he’d drive me to an audition, so along the way certain people have stood out to make things happen.”

But everything is not acting nowadays for the Colombian. Bustamante, who is very close to his family, moved his mom to Los Angeles when he relocated there. He is also a proud dad. His daughter’s only petition is that he plays a “good guy one time and a bad guy the next.” Aside from this, he has also made time to get involved with PADRES Contra El Cancer (Parents Against Cancer), Eva Longoria’s non-profit organization committed to improving the quality of life for Latino children with cancer. After attending last year’s fund raising gala and watching video greetings from children who are helped through the foundation Bustamante wanted to help more. He currently serves as an ambassador to the group, seeking donations and speaking about the children’s needs.

“Even though I feel like I made it, it has to be like I haven’t made it yet. My goal is to be a part of a big blockbuster or a cast that gives me a daily job and make me say, ‘yeah I made it.’ Many actors complain that there’s no jobs and I’ve just been blessed to have a job since I moved here so you have to make a decision and sacrifice it all to make it happen,” Bustamante confessed.

The new season of The Shield, premiering September 2, is rumored to be the best thus far. Bustamante only gushed that the show is “opening with a bang and finishing with a bang.” As far as Lifetime goes, the film, based on a true story, follows a mother whose daughter is believed to have died in a fire and is spotted six years later at a birthday party. Bustamante was “very interested in the story,” and from previews, it seems it will be an interesting tale.

The actor’s Passions episodes will begin airing in October. Of all the projects he has going on he admits that the daytime drama was a big challenge.

“Every actor has to do three scripts a day and you only have one take so it’s a lot of work! It made me a better actor and hats off to everyone who works on soaps everyday,” Bustamante said, saying that any job is a good job too. “As actors we have to be balanced and understanding and sometimes its just waiting, like going to the amusement park. Why stop in a line that takes two hours? Because there’s an amazing ride at the end and that’s exactly acting. You wait to get to the front of the line to get the ride of your life.”