What do you get when you ask some of America's most
powerful contemporary writers to develop plays based on their
interpretations of Shakespeare?
Answer: Love's Fire, an edgy collection of
seven short plays based on the bard's love sonnets.
Love's Fire continues this
week in Yulman Theater with performances through March 4 at 8 p.m., and
March 5, 2 p.m. Tickets, at $7 ($5 for students/seniors), are available at
the box office. Call ext. 6545.
The Acting Company, a national repertory theater,
commissioned Eric Bogosian, Ntozake Shange, Marsha Norman, Tony Kushner,
William Finn, Wendy Wasserstein and John Guare to create the short plays
that became Love's Fire.
“Taking their inspiration from Shakespeare's
sonnets, the writers walk the line between the weird and the
wonderful,” said director Kelli Wondra. “All the plays are
cutting-edge as they explore man's capacity for love, compassion, and
cruelty.”
From the book, Love's Fire: “Eric Bogosian's
Bitter Sauce (Sonnet 118) presents a fragile farce of sexual
jealousy and obsession; Ntozake Shange's streetwise response to Sonnet
128 comes up as the hip-hop Hydraulics Phat Like Mean; Marsha
Norman invents a daisy chain of betrayal with 140 (Sonnet 140); Tony
Kushner examines a hilariously paranoid episode in love, loss, and sexual
ambiguity set in a psychiatrist's office with Terminating, or Lass
Meine Schmerzen Nicht Verloren Sein, or Ambivalence (Sonnet 75);
William Finn transforms Sonnet 102 into a song about an artist attempting
to paint his lover – and failing – with Painting You; Wendy
Wasserstein's Waiting for Philip Glass is a sharp drawing-room
comedy set in the Hamptons (Sonnet 94); and John Guare charms with his
witty and wide-ranging look at the problems of creating such a play in the
first place in The General of Hot Desire (Sonnets 153 and
154).”