Measure for Measure presented by Chicago Shakespeare Theater at Online Stream

Around The Town Chicago - Recommended

"...The modern reboot of Shakespeare's "Measure for Measure: A Video-Enhanced Audio Play" is a nod to the last vestiges of Cuban aristocracy. During the Colonial Era, Spanish monarchs bestowed noble titles on Cubans, a great honor which, at the time, carried with it high status in government and politics. After the year 1898, the Cuban nobility no longer held any real power, but their titles were still passed down from one generation to the next: that is, until Fidel Castro and the Communist Revolution put an end to any semblance of hierarchy or class differences. Intent on exploring moral and political corruption during the last days of the Baptista dictatorship, director Henry Godinez uses Shakespeare's own words and a series of photographic collages to draw parallels between Cuba in 1958 with that of Austria in Shakespeare's tale, 400 years earlier. His intent is to point up the cultural contradictions of this time period, where the country's overall disreputable society flew in the face of a largely Catholic nation's religious morality."

Third Coast Review - Recommended

"...Hearing familiar performers deliver the classics brings a sense of normalcy to the end of a turbulent year, but the traditionally opulent, innovative production designs and costumes are missed. (Happy to avoid the tainted spit of enunciation, however). Perhaps these offerings will entice and capture new audiences who love podcasts like Serial, Radiolab, Wind of Change, SmartLess, currently controversial (meaning imperative) The 1619 Project, and other introspective dissections."

TotalTheater - Highly Recommended

"...The "audioplay" designation doesn't mean that we are wholly bereft of visual stimulus. Video designer Rasean Davonte Johnson has devised panoramic views of the Cuban capital from authentic period photographs portray it as a sun-baked urban colonio where poor citizens loiter in the doorways of abandoned shops or houses with broken walls and peeling paint, while wealthy idlers in furs and diamonds gamble in casinos. Faces of the characters superimposed like ghostly transparencies thereon keep us apprised of the speakers' identities from moment to moment (a chronic hazard in this type of presentation) to make the most of the final scene connecting Shakespeare's fairytale fable with history's gritty progression so that even nortes who know Cuba only as a playground for Hemingway and his pals cannot help but leave enlightened."