Shakespeare, Will by Joe Calarco

This play opens to the familiar groans of a classroom struggling to engage with a long-dead poet from the West Midlands. Shakespeare isn't for girls, they argue. The female characters are all addendum's to the male ones: and-Juliet, and-Cleopatra, and-Cressida. What is there in Shakespeare's works for young women?

Given that the characters’ main objection to Shakespeare is on the grounds of his titles, it's especially disappointing that the name of this play doesn't refer to any of the ten female actors it requires to produce.

Based on their early observations, the young women depicted could probably also point out for themselves that the majority of Shakespeare, Will doesn't even pass the Bechtel test. The female characters talk endlessly about an absent male, and when they accidentally invoke his spirit, a number of them fawn over him.

Will proceeds to solve their personal problems with passages from his plays, but is seemingly unable to find a kind word for his own wife, whom he publicly belittles, and dismisses as historically insignificant.

This play came about due to Signature Theatre in Arlington, Virginia who regularly commission new work for young actors. Unfortunately it fails to respond to the complaints of the generation it is meant to serve: in its blind reverence of the Bard, it misses an opportunity to invite young people into a world that could indeed provide reassurance in times of need.