Commonwealth Shakespeare Company

The Commonwealth Shakespeare Company does a production of a Shakespeare play on Boston Common every summer. It generally goes two weeks, playing every night at 8 PM except for Mondays. Pull up a section of lawn … but get there early, because the best spots are taken an hour in advance or so. Oh, yeah, it’s free.
The staging and design’s usually eclectic, and it’ll drive you buggy if you’re a purist who demands that Shakespeare be performed on painted period backdrops and in musty old black broadcloth and ivory lace. Taming of the Shrew had costuming and design as if they were all paisans in the North End circa 1890. As You Like It was set around 1935, with the bad guy even wearing a black pseudo-​Fascisti uniform. Hamlet had a bleak, Brutalist set where the escape scene had searchlights flashing over the stage and the sound of prison sirens and choppers in the background. The Comedy of Errors was Miami Beach circa 1930, with bossa nova aesthetics and music. This isn’t your high school drama production.
And what it is is AMAZING. They make Shakespeare live, they make it fun and spectacular, and you might find yourself hitting multiple nights in the same year.
This is my 100^th review on Unilocal,and I wanted to make sure it’d be a five-​star I could legitimately give … and I’ve only given ten 5-​stars. Hit this up next summer. Just take my word for it.

My first Fenway experience is not a baseball game or a tour of the stadium, it is a Shakespearean experience by the CSC for 20^th anniversary celebration.
Attending Shakespear at Fenway is certainly beyond the ordinary, the owners of Red Sox was present and even quoted from Shakespeare plays where it ‘hints’ about baseball. The usual gloriously lighted baseball field was veiled with a certain artistic mood this evening. The skits after skits from the most sought after Shakespearean plays are then introduced and performed by various talented actors and actresses: Othello, Macbeth, Romeo and Juliet, Twelfth Night, Taming of the shrewd. The theatrics, the songs, the laughter, and even the unscheduled fire alarm going off in the middle of the event added charm to the evening of indulgence.
Once in a lifetime experience.
P. S.: King Lear was announced to be the Shakespeare on the Common for 2015. Now if time could just pass faster …

Free evening performances in the Boston Common, near the Parkman Bandstand and the Earl of Sandwich, for about 2 weeks each summer. There is a Saturday matinée. Food trucks, port-​a-​potties, rental chairs, and parking under the Boston Common make this a very easy event to attend. Great actors, unusual staging, easy to understand. The jokes are hilarious, the audience relaxed and happy, the moon is high and all is right with the world as the plot unfolds.