July Blogroll: PDX Summer Shakespeare Edition

Dear readers:

This summer is bursting with Shakespeare and Shakespeare-ish performance options running all price ranges in the Portland area. Strangely, sadly, I am actually in California for a research fellowship, and so am missing a great deal of the offerings. Regardless, I did want to let you know what was available. Maybe you’ll let me know what you think?

Samuel French Film & Theatre Bookshop, Los Angeles, CA.

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WIL Festival 2.1: “The Merry Wives of Windsor”

“The Merry Wives of Windsor” is also known as “that other Falstaff” play. The rumor goes that Queen Elizabeth, having been moved by William Shakespeare’s revisions of several older plays into a coherent teratology we call the Henriad, requested Falstaffe be written into another play. But he was already dead by the start of “Henry V,” so now what? “Merry Wives” conscripts the genre of angry women plays to provide a simultanequel: a simultaneous universe where Falstaffe doesn’t die, and instead enjoys his knighthood in the rolling countryside of Windsor. This composition context of “Merry Wives” makes it a perfect play to talk about your brain on repertory.

From left: Keith Cable (Ford, disguised as Broom) and David Bellis-Squires (Falstaffe).

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