JERSEY CITY – Thanks to theater pioneers like Joseph Papp, outdoor Shakespeare has become as much of a summer staple as barbeques and trips down the Shore. This year the Hudson Shakespeare Company (HSC) of Jersey City will be celebrating its 25th year of bringing traveling Shakespeare programs to various communities in Northern New Jersey.
Each summer the company produces a Shakespeare play for each month of the summer and has garnered a reputation for presenting rarely done and even dubious Shakespeare titles in a variety of settings from Roman era to renaissance to modern.
This summer the company will bring its first ever Shakespeare history cycle, but with its usual little-done Shakespeare twist, and to several new venues.
Kicking off the festivities will be “Richard II”, a play about a cult leader-like king who is challenged by his more blue-collar like cousin, Henry Bolingbroke, as they wrangle for control of the throne. The production will run June 8-23.
This will be followed by “Edward III”, a little done and recently added play to Shakespeare’s complete works. The story follows Richard II’s grandfather, Edward III. A run of the mill campaign in France is sidelined as the king falls in love with the bewitching Countess of Salisbury. For centuries, it was unknown who wrote the play and at times it was ascribed to Shakespeare. Within the last few decades, the claim to Shakespeare’s authorship was reexamined and with the aid of computer programs it has been shown that Shakespeare was responsible for several scenes, with the remainder being written by Thomas Kyd, who also wrote “The Spanish Tragedy.” The show runs July 12-28.
The summer season concludes with a merging of both parts of “Henry IV” into one two hour show. The Shakespeare history play that’s more comedy romp than historical story follows the ever partying Prince Hal who hangs out more with his sometime criminal compatriot Sir John Falstaff than at the court of his disapproving father. The coming of age prequel to “Henry V” ranges from drunken revelry to thrilling sword battles. Show runs August 9-25
This year HSC will work with several new venues along with the usual mainstays of Jersey City, Hackensack and Kenilworth. The company will come to libraries in Mahwah, Montclair, Woodbridge, Roselle Park, Ridgewood, Bogota, Secaucus, and Summit, as well as Rhino Theater in Pompton Lakes.
All shows are free to the public. For outdoor showings it is recommended you bring a lawn chair or blanket. Seating is provided for indoor venues.
For a complete list of dates and venues visit www.hudsonshakespeare.com or call (973) 449-7443.
The company was founded in 1992 by lifelong Jersey City resident L. Robert “Luther” Johnson. Johnson had worked with several New York City and Jersey City based companies such as Civic Theater of Hudson County and New York Gilbert and Sullivan Players and saw there was a lack of Shakespeare produced on the New Jersey side of the Hudson.
“In New York you couldn’t walk five feet without falling over a group of actors doing Shakespeare. On this side, nothing,” Johnson said in a 2005 interview.
Deciding to fill a needed niche, Johnson banded together with several theater colleagues and mounted a production of “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” in Jersey City’s Hamilton Park in June 1992.
From this single production, Johnson and company continued to produce summer Shakespeare titles in several other parks in Jersey City and Hoboken. In 2002, Johnson partnered with director Jon Ciccarelli to expand the company’s programs beyond Hudson County to communities such as Hackensack, Fort Lee, Kenilworth, Westfield, and West Milford.
Johnson, untimely passed away in 2010 but his work is carried on by Ciccarelli and his wife Noelle, bringing both familiar classics and rediscovering little done Shakespeare titles.
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