UWM's 'Second Best Bed' Is Top-Rate Shakespeare

The best university theater productions walk the line between education and entertainment. With The Second Best Bed: Shakespeare's Women Revealed, director Jim Tasse and the UW-Milwaukee Theatre Department stage a show that walks that line and challenges both actors and audience.

The bare-stage studio theater opens in darkness. A cast of women in the BA and BFA programs pierces the darkness with flashlights, and then the cast members begin to perform bits of dialogue simultaneously. All at once they stop, and the show starts. It's a collection of scenes highlighting some of Shakespeare's less-celebrated female characters. Shakespearean celebrities Lady Macbeth, Juliet, Ophelia and their ilk are absent. Scenes are drawn from Othello, Titus Andronicus, and various Henry scripts and other histories. Tasse and company construct a kind of thematic narrative out of the scenes in a presentation that stands on its own as a solidly crafted piece of drama.

Second Best Bed is a patchwork creature, with the selections dominated by the histories (including a lot of the Henriad). Plot elements threaten to crowd out the immediacy of the drama, but Tasse and the cast do a brilliant job of keeping it grounded. Small decisions make all the difference here. Having all of the women perform barefoot in this type of studio theater environment adds a visceral reality to the staging. At the end of the show, cast members shake hands with audience members, personally thanking people for coming. This production makes Shakespeare feel refreshingly approachable.

UWM Theatre's The Second Best Bed: Shakespeare's Women Revealed runs through March 6 at KSE 508 in Kenilworth Square East, 2155 N. Prospect Ave. For tickets, call 414-229-4308.