Staging a Revolution

The elasticity of William Shakespeare’s words — the way they can be stretched to anywhere, anytime, and still resonate universal truths — will once again be put to the test by GableStage and wunderkind Tarell Alvin McCraney, a year after their radical truncation of Hamlet into a 90-minute barnburner. This time around, McCraney, a New World School of the Arts graduate, will translate Antony and Cleopatra, Shakespeare’s divisive tragedy about the Roman general and the iconic pharaoh, from its original setting of the Sicilian Revolt circa 44 B.C. to the Haitian Revolution of the 18th Century. Imperial politics will play out on a stripped-down vision of Saint-Domingue in a landmark production heralded for more than a year. GableStage is producing the work in collaboration with New York’s Public Theater and London’s Royal Shakespeare Company, marking a first for a Miami theater. It was funded in part by a successful $55,000 campaign and will star an international cast of expert Shakespearean actors.

Jan. 10-Feb. 9, 2014