For four centuries, directors and theater companies have pursued an essence of Shakespeare that, once distilled into a potion appropriate to the age, releases the elusive spirit of the original. For Naked Shakes, the text-driven, actor-centered Shakespeare program that UCSB's Irwin Appel has helmed for the past decade, this pursuit has until now meant deft and highly engaging barebones annual productions that typically show up around Labor Day.
This year, however, that is all changing. With The Death of Kings, a new, two-part, five-hour adaptation of eight history plays, Naked Shakes has leapt with abandon into a new and considerably more ambitious mode. Beginning on February 19, UCSB's Hatlen Theater will overflow with three weeks of epic theater, as a cast of more than 50 and a creative dream team collaborate first on Part 1, I Come but for Mine Own, which will play by itself on the opening weekend, and then again on March 1-6. Part 2, The White Rose and the Red, opens on February 26-27 and then returns for March 2-6. Theatergoers who wish to see the shows in succession on the same day can do so on March 5-6. The director assures that the two parts are entirely understandable on their own and could be seen in either order with equal enjoyment.
None of this would be happening if Appel had not worked for more than a year to create this new adaptation, which shrinks the overall length of the eight plays involved — Richard II, Henry IV Part 1, Henry IV Part 2, Henry V, Henry VI Parts 1, 2, and 3, and Richard III — by 75 percent. But now, as the massive undertaking moves to the stage, Appel is in director mode, asserting that it is "extremely important for everyone involved with the project to feel ownership," and adding that he "would not have conceived of or composed this without the team of people in the UCSB Theater department."