Patrick Schmitz’ latest William Shakespeare parody—starring the aptly named Shakesparody Players—turned one of literature’s greatest tragedies on its head to uproariously funny effect. The Comedy of Othello…kinda sorta made good use of Next Act Theatre’s reverberant converted warehouse space to turn drama to melodrama and brooding to bawdiness.
Schmitz has a gift for comedy that takes many forms, and many of those forms were on display here. The idea for the “kinda sorta” series (thus far, he’s also parodied Romeo and Juliet and Hamlet) came from his efforts to condense the classics for his high school students. That good-humored, teacherly voice came through here in such jokes as the 16th-century definition of Iago’s military title of “ancient”—he’s a flag-bearer, just a flag-bearer—being used against him by all the other characters.
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