The Third Wheel

It’s a genuine problem. The thirty-odd plays that lord over the classical stage are making it virtually synonymous with “safe and familiar.” Tartuffe gets yanked from the mothballs in dozens of predictable, powdered-wig productions a year while Volpone languishes in a deepening obscurity that makes it increasingly difficult to sell to subscribers. Classical NYC companies like the Pearl and Jean Cocteau Rep will typically couch a Nathan the Wise or Lorca play in an otherwise textbook season, but Kulick’s come up with the most aggressive and creative branch-out effort I’ve yet seen. He’s starting CSC’s season with four readings of underrepresented Elizabethan plays: Marlowe’s Jew of Malta, the anonymously penned Arden of Haversham, Jonson’s Volpone and ... Richard III. I like it. For once, it’s Shakespeare who gets “included.” Having movie stars do the readings is a wise and commendable use of that CSC resource. If the celebs draw crowds and Kulick does this every fall, he might generate serious interest in neglected classics like no one in this country has before.