This Director Has a Way with Shakespeare and, Boy, Is It Bad
- Broadway Beat
- May 4
- 2 min read
by Conor Moroney. @conorseamusactor.
SHEFFIELD, MA - Todd Beckett, visionary director of the Connerie Theatre Company in Sheffield, Massachusetts, is said to have a particular way with Shakespeare and, boy, according to his contemporaries, is it bad.
“What can I say?” asked Beckett, sitting in his office filled with an alarming number of No Fear Shakespeares. “I am dragging the immortal Bard kicking and screaming into the 21st Century. People don’t want to deal with the archaic language and lack of explanation. Ambiguity is for suckers, which is why my upcoming Romeo & Juliet will take place during The Troubles.”
Elizabeth Van Dam, a stalwart actor at Connerie, shared her thoughts while getting ready to partake in one of Beckett’s “unique” Shakespeare productions.
“Well, he is definitely creative,” Van Dam said, sitting in her living room with a script and a copy of Angela’s Ashes side by side. “He comes in on day one with this burst of energy and we are excited to begin the process. Our realization only hits us when the curtain goes down and we hear someone shout ‘what the hell was that?’”
Lucas Earlman, the artistic director and iambic mastermind of Supercilious Theatre Company, has worked with Mr. Beckett before and sent us a warning about this Bard-binger of doom.
“I should have stopped him when he set Love's Labour in a refugee camp,” Earlman shouted from atop his Brechtian Machine. “I explained to him that it didn’t make sense and was borderline offensive, but he laughed and said I wasn’t seeing the bigger picture, that it was about ‘Lost.’ If I can just find a way to go back in time and just get him to enjoy Ben Johnson, the classical theatre scene would be less of a mess than it is now.”
When asked what he had planned after Romeo & Juliet, Beckett smirked and said he felt it was time to bid the soldiers shoot Horatio.
You have to hand it to Beckett—he’s definitely found the audacity slider and cranked it all the way past 100. Setting Romeo & Juliet during The Troubles is such a chaotic choice that even Shakespeare himself might pop up just to ask, "Why, sir, why?" The image of actors dramatically delivering "wherefore art thou" next to bombed-out buildings is peak dystopian dinner theater. I’d say it’s like trying to play Geometry Dash Lite with the screen upside-down—technically possible, wildly disorienting, and likely to end in tragedy.