Thinking Theater NYC

Billie Andersson. Photo by Amy Goosens. Lower Manhattan’s Shakespeare Downtown , now in its seventh season of producing quality classical theatre accessible to everyone including, including Romeo and Juliet (2016), Richard III (2017), A Midsummer Night's Dream (2018), Hamlet (2019), The Three Sisters (2021), and Saint Joan (2022; read our review here ), will present a new adaptation of Alexandre Dumas fils' The Lady of the Camellias this June. Adapted by Billie Andersson, The Lady of the Camellias combines dialogue from Dumas’s novel (considerably different from Dumas’s stage play) with text and structural concepts from the libretto of the opera La Traviata .  Set in mid-19th century France, this new adaptation, directed by Geoffrey Horne, sees a courtesan suffering from consumption named Marguerite (Billie Andersson) and nicknamed “The Lady of the Camellias" because she wears a red camellia when she is indisposed, and a white camellia when she is available to her l...