Shakespeare's Histories: Ten Epic Plays at a Breakneck Pace!
FOUR STARS | 'Easily the best Shakespearean actor I’ve seen on the Fringe circuit'
Rating: ★★★★
Company: By the Book Productions, Toronto
Genre: Play — Dramedy
Venue: 29 — One88
"Which show should we go to?"
As much as I love Shakespeare, my Fringe experience tells me that a common answer to this question is not "How about the one that crams five hundred years of English history and 10 of Shakespeare's lesser-known plays, seven of which have 'Henry' in the title, into an hour?"
Too bad, because Sir John D. Huston is not a man of common talent. He's also not a knight as far as I know, but he carries himself like one and is easily the best Shakespearean actor I've seen on the Fringe circuit, so I'm going with it.
[John D Huston] takes bloody, dusty history and turns it into a witty celebration of performance itself.- Source
Aided by an ingeniously simple wardrobe, a sometimes uncooperative, but helpfully illustrated, slideshow and Timothy Mooney's (Breakneck Hamlet) meticulous distillation of the sources, Huston does so much more than lecture and recite. He takes bloody, dusty history and turns it into a witty celebration of performance itself.
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