Review: Shakespeare as Touchstone in FRIGID New York’s Little Shakespeare Festival’s “My Own Private Shakespeare” and “When My Cue Comes”

My Own Private Shakespeare 

Written by Justin Hay

Directed by Mona Zaidi

Presented by Modern Classic Theatre

August 1-4, 2024

When My Cue Comes

Written By Aaron Moore, B Carty, Gabriel Ethridge, Madeline Parks,
Natalie DeBoer, Reid Watson, and William Shakespeare

Directed by B Carty

Presented by Hamlet Isn't Dead

August 1-17, 2024

Both shows at UNDER St. Marks, 94 Saint Marks Pl., Manhattan, NYC

Justin Hay. Photo by Mona Zaidi.

While Shakespeare’s heightened poetic language and dramatic situations might suggest to the uninitiated that his plays cannot possibly be relevant to the banal struggles of everyday life, My Own Private Shakespeare and When My Cue Comes, part of FRIGID New York’s Little Shakespeare Festival, serve as poignant reminders that in fact the situation is quite the opposite. In both shows, Shakespeare’s works are not the untouchable monuments of staggering genius that they are sometimes regarded to be, but rather touchstones that enable us to withstand life’s vicissitudes.

My Own Private Shakespeare, a one-man show in which a Shakespearean actor (Justin Hay) recounts the multiple tragedies of his estranged father’s death, his failing marriage, and health issues, interweaves personal anecdotes with well-known passages from Shakespeare’s major tragedies. The pathos of Hay’s story is lightened by his wry humor; describing a seizure he had, for example, he notes it “sounds dramatic” but that he does not really know—“I missed it.” The well-trodden Shakespeare passages in which he finds comfort acquire a new energy in Hay’s delivery and in the unexpected, multiple ways in which they recall his own experience. King Lear’s estrangement from his daughters is analogous to Hay’s from his own tyrannical father, with Hay identifying with the wronged Cordelia. However, later in the show, when describing his separation from his own children as a result of shifting custody arrangements with this ex-wife, Hay identifies with the downtrodden, mad Lear on the heath. The ending of Hay’s show recalls his teenage experience of listening to an album of Laurence Olivier’s Othello, in particular Othello’s soliloquy in 5.2 just prior to his murder of Desdemona, “It is the cause, it is the cause, my soul.” Although he did not quite understand it at the time, Olivier’s powerful delivery enchanted him, and the passage stayed with him, serving as a source of identification and solace much like the others performed in the show.

Reid Watson, Gabriel Ethridge, Aaron Moore, Natalie DeBoer. Photo courtesy of Emily Owens PR

In When My Cue Comes, four minor characters from Shakespeare plays—Jaques de Boys from As You Like It (Aaron Moore), the Boatswain from The Tempest (Gabriel Ethridge), Reynaldo from Hamlet (Reid Watson), and the seemingly ubiquitous but unmemorable Messenger (Natalie DeBoer)—are stuck indefinitely in a waiting room when their lines are reassigned to other characters or cut altogether. Although initially frustrated by their circumstances and willing to do nearly anything to return to their “home shows,” these four characters, as well as the Stage Manager (Madeline Parks), consider what possibilities might await them if they think about what they could be beyond the narrowly prescribed limits of their assigned roles. When My Cue Comes is a hilarious consideration of what is lost in contemporary Shakespeare performances, in which cuts are all but guaranteed. And yet, the show underscores a deeply serious and important truth, that these characters, and all of us, really, can always imagine more for our lives than what they have been in the past. We need not wait fruitlessly like characters in a Beckett play for something or someone that will never come; rather, with Shakespeare as our guide, the future can take shape anew, limited only by the power of our own imaginations.

-Stephanie Pietros