In Vermont Repertory Theatre’s lush, vigorous production of Shakespeare in Love, the problems keep coming for one William Shakespeare, as if the playwright needed a taste of his own plots. Our hero suffers from writer’s block, lovesickness, debt, pesky theater owners and one big instance of gender disguise. As it turns out, these are precisely the conditions necessary to write Romeo and Juliet, and we watch Shakespeare discover his play as he finds a romance powerful enough to stir his imagination.
Marc Norman and Tom Stoppard won the 1998 Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay for the movie of the same name, and Lee Hall adapted it for the stage in 2014. It’s a story about putting on a play that expresses a deep truth every theater artist knows: All through rehearsals, it just isn’t clear that the thing is going to work. And yet when the curtain rises, a little miracle occurs.
Everybody wants something from Will Shakespeare. Theater owner Philip Henslowe is owed a long-promised script; without it, he can’t sell tickets to get ruthless moneylender Hugh Fennyman off his back. Acting eminence Richard Burbage is equally impatient for the play he’s commissioned. It’s a bad time for Will to lose his muse.
He’s making pathetic progress on a new comedy, and his playwriting rival, Christopher Marlowe, mocks his working title (Romeo & Ethel, the Pirate’s Daughter) while dispensing friendly and quite good advice on what’s missing from his stalled sonnet. Marlowe’s rule-the-roost confidence contrasts with Shakespeare’s shabby career to date. The play’s essential joke is that the nonentity scurrying from woe to woe is on the brink of … everything.
Shakespeare in Love bounces the viewer from one set of dilemmas to another, and director Michael Fidler steers 20 actors through complex comic paces. The shallow stage of the Isham Barn Theatre in Williston presents challenges, but Fidler organizes action cleverly, amplifying the story with movement. The impressive actors hide the underlying precision necessary to convey a hilarious shambles, and they resist the temptation to overplay, presenting characters with human foibles rather than cartoon shortcuts.
The overstuffed story whirls through all the social strata of 1593 London. Viola, reckless spirit and daughter of a wealthy merchant, has seen Shakespeare’s plays performed at court and adores his verse and the stage itself. But she can have no place there — men play all the women’s roles. Plucky Viola disguises herself to audition for the still formless role of Romeo and impresses Will.
Her disguise works so well that when they meet again at a ball, he makes no connection except a brand-new one: He’s in love. Wouldn’t you know, a balcony is involved. Their story soon parallels what will be Romeo and Juliet’s, with furious sword fighting to match the Capulet-Montague battles and an arranged marriage designed to yank Viola away just as she and Will have found love.
Scenes from Romeo and Juliet develop from the vicissitudes of Will’s romance, and the play within the play finally takes shape when enough villains have been tricked and rules broken for the tragedy to be staged. Fidler’s elegant direction strikes its finest note here, as all the actors appear to the audience, lining the two-level upstage balcony to watch the death scene. They become a portrait of a theater audience — engaged, touched, alive.
The production sails on scheming, wordplay and gentle humor.
The production sails on scheming, wordplay and gentle humor. It runs a little long, almost too crammed with delightful moments. Theater in-jokes abound, and Shakespeare quotes fly, generally way out of context. A charming dog has an impressive stage debut as Spot, as in “out, damned.”
Many of the characters are real, and the story is fairly accurate about the ragtag state of theater making in the 16th century. We can forgive various inaccuracies, the largest of which is the notion that Shakespeare struggled to concoct the plot of Romeo and Juliet. For it and virtually all his plays, he borrowed a story; his gift was for language and character, with plots merely the mechanism to trigger emotion.
Vermont Repertory Theatre has assembled a strong cast, gleaming épées, neat tech tricks and four live singers to deepen the mood with period music. The artistry simply glows. The peak is the work of costume designer Lyn Feinson and the 11 people credited with building the show’s superb Elizabethan attire. Character-defining hats, spectacular gowns and doublets to die for make the show a pageant.
Each member of the cast proves that there are no small roles. Indeed, this big scaffold of a play needs comic polish everywhere to hold up larger parts and produce its pleasant illusion of lightness. Merrill Cameron makes all of Viola’s setbacks funny, and Connor Kendall is a stalwart Will. Their fine work rests on an ensemble that hits perfect beats and works smoothly, whether as courtly dancers or sword fighters.
With enchanting magnificence, Sean Macquinor plays the illustrious Burbage. Kyle Ferguson, as top-billed Ned Alleyn, shows an actor’s vanity tempered by admiration of what Shakespeare is creating. Brad Coolidge is serene and witty as Marlowe, and Kathryn Blume fully imperial as Queen Elizabeth. Peter Carlile is suitably desperate as Henslowe the theater owner, and Christopher Ziter, as moneylender Fennyman, delicately shows theater’s intoxicating pull on the hardest heart.
Sabrina Sydnor produces an archetypal Nurse, and Jayden M. Choquette renders a villain’s frustrations with a fine, funny edge. All the other performers in this talented cast contribute with pop-eyed takes, aristocratic flourishes, knowing looks or dumbfounded staggers. Some have to be bad actors, and they’re really good at it.
The play reminds us that Shakespeare was always writing on deadline. That pressure has long cooled, leaving behind the work of an unmatched imagination. As Will tosses out ideas and Marlowe, ever over his shoulder, bats them back, we get a look at a writer inventing language. To do that, he had to live. ➆
The original print version of this article was headlined “Stage Kisses| Theater review: Shakespeare in Love, Vermont Repertory Theatre”
This article appears in June 17 • 2026.
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