Simon Callow closes his acclaimed two week run in the play, BEING SHAKESPEARE in Chicago today. It opened earlier in the month to great reviews at the BAM theatre in New York City.
It also appears that Mr. Callow will be staying in the Midwest for the next week or so, to visit certain libraries where new Orson Welles material can be examined, since he will be doing a benefit performance for the Chicago PBS station, WTTW on May 9, 2012.
Theatre is not normally in my budget, but I had the pleasure of seeing the show this past Saturday and I thought it was excellent. Hopefully Callow will make a DVD of it, like the one he made for his one-man Charles Dickens show of a few years ago. He did many Shakespeare excerpts that will be familiar from the Welles movies, including "Tomorrow and Tomorrow" from MACBETH, Falstaff's "What is honor?" speech from HENRY IV, and several others, all beautifully performed. The Shakespeare and Dickens shows, as well as a 2002 revival of CHIMES AT MIDNIGHT, where Callow played Falstaff to Kieth Baxter's Henry IV, are three of his recent stage shows that intertwine with Wellesian territory:
