Mad Hal?

OK, I’d usually wait and just toss this in the This Week in Shakespeare podcast, but this is just too good to pass up.

KPBS down San Diego way (bonus points for those who get that non-Shakespearean reference!) have previewed an upcoming joint production by the La Jolla Playhouse and San Diego Rep Without Walls…

El Henry looks to be an update/postdating of The First Part of Henry the Fourth, set in a post-Apocalyptic San Diego of 2045. Falstaff becomes Fausto, and the rival families become roaming street gangs. Gone is the Shakespearean text, replaced by Caló, mixing Spanish, English and street slang.

Combine all this with the fact that this will not be presented in a theater, but an environmental setting… well, let’s just say this looks really cool…

It might end up being a train wreck, or it could be transcendent… regardless, what you can’t call it is “museum theater”–which is how I felt about the RSC’s The First Part of Henry the Fourth production that was broadcast to movie theaters earlier this month.

Here’s a link to the KPBS story where they call this “giving Shakespeare a Mad Max update”, and–more importantly–the play’s page on the La Jolla Playhouse site itself.

 

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