I love Shakespeare! I’ve seen live performances of:
A Midsummer Night’s Dream (twice) King Lear
All’s Well That Ends Well
The Tempest
Measure for Measure
Troilus and Cressida
Macbeth (three times, including a bizarre but very good production in which women played the men’s roles and vice-versa, and done in the style of Japanese kabuki theatre) Henry V
Hamlet Love’s Labours Lost (twice) The Merry Wives of Windsor
Romeo and Juliet
Othello (with Ben Kingsley in the title role and David Suchet as Iago - both were terrific!)
My favorite non-live performances: Ian McKellen’s British Fascist movie adaptation of Richard III, and Benedict Cumberpatch’s recent filmed production of Hamlet. Highly recommended.
I also played Oberon in a high school production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, and still remember my first line: “Ill met by moonlight, proud Titania!”
Ooh, I thought of starting a thread like this a few times. Let’s see…
The Comedy of Errors
Macbeth
King John
The Two Gentlemen of Verona
Love’s Labour’s Lost
King Lear
Twelfth Night
Hamlet
That’s all I can remember right now. The first three were by a theater troupe in Seattle called Greek Active, that did recontextualizations (their word) of classic plays. I didn’t see their Romeo and Juliet, but I’m told that the Montagues and the Capulets were rival lesbian softball teams. The performances were in the back room of a bar. For King John they passed out cocktail toothpicks with British or French flags on them, and we were supposed to wave them for our side during certain scenes.
Come to think of it, The Two Gentlemen of Verona was a non-traditional staging as well. It was the free Shakespeare performance on Boston Common a few summers ago. Instead of old Verona it was done as Rat Pack, '60s Las Vegas; they even added a few songs from the era.
My mother used to drive down to Ashland for that every year. I don’t know if she ever put together a list of which plays she’d seen, but it would have been close to complete.
The Taming of the Shrew
Comedy of Errors
Midsummer Night’s Dream
Twelfth Night
The Tempest
Henry IV Part 1
Hamlet
I’ve seen two productions of Midsummer Night’s Dream and three of Twelfth Night, which are by no means my favorites. It looks like time to find some more Shakespeare performance variety!
In the version I saw, the whole “double, double toil and trouble” scene was replaced by three guys in drag, in cheerleader outfits, lip-syncing Dark Lady by Cher.
COMEDIES
All’s Well That Ends Well
As You Like It
Comedy of Errors
Love’s Labour’s Lost
Merchant of Venice
Merry Wives of Windsor
Midsummer Night’s Dream (more times than I can recall, including the RSC in Stratford, although the best production ever wasthis one )
Much Ado about Nothing (a few times)
Taming of the Shrew (this is thelatest one I saw, with an all-female cast)
Tempest
Twelfth Night (probably seen this 5 times? It’s quite popular at the local Shakespeare-in-the-park)
Two Gentlemen of Verona
HISTORIES
Henry V
Richard III
TRAGEDIES
Antony and Cleopatra
Hamlet
Julius Caesar
King Lear
Macbeth
Othello
Romeo and Juliet
King John
Julius Caesar
Macbeth
Henry V
As You Like It
All’s Well that Ends Well
Othello
Twelfth Night
Hamlet
Much Ado About Nothing
Anthony and Cleopatra
The Tempest
Measure For Measure
Love’s Labors Lost
The Comedy of Errors
A Midsummer’s Night’s Dream
I would like to see them all, but haven’t been able to do more than these. King Lear and Richard III are at the top of my bucket list.
Comedies: All of them, I think, though I might have some mistakes in this list (a lot of the comedies are rather interchangeable)
All’s Well that Ends Well
As You Like It
Comedy of Errors
Love’s Labour Lost
Measure for Measure
Merchant of Venice
Merry Wives of Windsor
Midsummer Night’s Dream
Much Ado about Nothing
Taming of the Shrew
Tempest
Twelfth Night
Two Gentlemen of Verona
Winter’s Tale
Several of these, of course, I’ve seen multiple times. The Tempest is my overall favorite, but the best production I’ve ever seen was a Midsummer.
Histories, just two:
Henry IV, Pt. 1
Henry VIII
And there was a lot of wind noise at the performance of Henry IV Pt. 1, so I didn’t follow much of it.
Tragedies, just four:
Hamlet
Julius Caesar
Macbeth
Romeo and Juliet
Of these, I think that Macbeth is the only one I’ve seen multiple productions of. It’s especially popular of late: In the past year, it’s been put on by the Great Lakes Theater, the Cleveland Shakespeare Festival, and my local high school.
The free performance in the park in Boston this summer will be Richard III, so I’ll probably be knocking that off my list. They do a good show, if you’re in the area.
Where did you see King John? I gather that one is not performed terribly often.
Jesus. A LOT, over the past 45 years, mostly in Cleveland, New Haven, and NYC. Several multiple times. It would be extremely difficult to list them.
Although, for the record, I have NEVER SEEN a History.
One of the most memorable would be a Midsummer Night’s Dream at my kids’ private school. To make it easier on Robin Goodfellow, the monstrous number of lines were divided between three small similar-looking teenage girls who kept sweeping around each other in a visual dance whirlpool. It was a weirdly charming effect: a triad Puck.
Also, the confrontation between Helena and Hermia was the best comic performance of the scene ever…knocked the hell out of any professional performance I’ve been to.
Also, Oberon was played by the Alpha gay male at the school, who was obviously relishing being the King of the Fairies.
The first time I saw Richard III was truly memorable. It was on the thrust stage at the Stratford Festival in London, Ontario, and Colm Feore played Richard. His entrance at the very first scene was into a darkened theatre, with him striding forward, lit from behind. He was playing Richard as badly deformed and his gait was remarkable, made even more so by the rear illumination, which cast bizarre grotesque shadows. His performance was amazing.
Even so, in my opinion the show was stolen by the murder, who comes onstage after killing the princes in the tower.
Again, the bare thrust stage, dimly lit, and the murderer sitting on the edge of the stage, doing a soliloquy about having just murdered two young boys, all the while playing with a silver chain and locket that he’d taken from one of his victims.
It was CHILLING! I felt the hairs on the back of my neck going up. I felt I was truly listening to a psychopathic murderer, calmly discussing the day’s work. Then he just got up, tossed the locker in the air and caught it, and exited.
It was the most impressive moment I’ve ever had in a theatre, and it lasted all of five minutes.
A Midsummer Night’s Dream (high school production)
The Comedy of Errors (community theatre production)
Much Ado About Nothing (Shakespeare on the Saskatchewan)
The Merry Wives of Windsor (Stratford Festival)
I can’t remember if I saw Twelfth Night live or not.
I got bad news for you. It was almost 25 years ago. The theater troupe is long since disbanded. Last time I searched, I couldn’t find anything except a few passing references to them online. The bar is still there.
But I’ve got good news for you! I checked again, and there are some videos! Here’s a youtuber who uploaded several snippets from their version of Macbeth
But, I’ve got some bad news for you. The Dark Lady bit is not there. Some of the three witches bit is, so I may have mis-remembered some of the details of what they left in and what they took out. I do remember the cheerleaders, and the song; they were in there, somewhere. I don’t make mistakes about stuff like that.
They really were good shows. There’s some more info about them in Dan Savage’s bibliography on Wikipedia. He adapted and directed a lot of their productions under a pseudonym.
One other thing I remember about their Macbeth was the actor playing Ross. He started with a thick Scottish accent, and it just got thicker as the play went on. By this point, he’s pretty much incomprehensible. It was great.
My niece’s high school (she’s crew, not cast) did something similar, with two separate castings for “Puck” and “Robin Goodfellow”. IIRC, they were usually both on stage at the same time.
