I'm Being Vigitant!
It's hard to get words out when I'm trying to cram them in
I know how desperately my faithful readers cling to my every word, so I want to apologize for my recent silence. But I have a fun excuse.
I’m currently at the Cincinnati Shakespeare Company, rehearsing the role of Verges in Dogberry & Verges Are Scared, a new comedy by actors-turned-playwrights Michael Doherty and Will Mobley that shamelessly applies Tom Stoppard’s Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead template to Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing and makes it work far better and more hysterically than it has any right to.
After the show closes here in Cincinnati (where the title clowns are being played by Doherty and Anthony Lawton), I’ll travel with it to the Edinburgh Festival Fringe in Scotland, where it’ll run from August 5-30, at 3.35pm every day except Monday.
It’ll be my ninth time at the Fringe, and the first time acting somebody else’s script. 2026 is also the 10th anniversary of the European premiere of William Shakespeare’s Long Lost First Play (abridged) at the Fringe in 2016; the 30th anniversary of the Fringe debut of The Bible: The Complete Word of God (abridged) in 1996; and the 60th anniversary of the 1966 world premiere — at the Edinburgh Fringe! — of Stoppard’s Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead, the play that inspired both the Reduced Shakespeare Company and Dogberry & Verges.
So I’m desperately memorizing lines. I also wrote about Stoppard’s 60-year legacy and this new play he inspired for the Folger Shakespeare Library.1 And I interviewed Mike and Will about the evolution of their play for my Reduced Shakespeare Company Podcast, which I’ll embed below and you can also hear wherever you get your podcasts.
So I guess that’s three fun excuses for why I haven’t posted more. I’ll try to do better.
You can click on the link and read it at the Folger website. Or should I cut it and paste my article here? Please weigh in!