Austin Tichenor

Shakespeare’s poetry, plots, and characters have inspired dozens of musicals, as well as numerous comic songs and even special cameos. Austin Tichenor explores the musical theater that keeps us humming and brushing up our Shakespeare.

Austin Tichenor takes a look at Chloé Zhao’s film adaptation of Maggie O’Farrell’s 2020 novel Hamnet, writing that Jessie Buckley’s performance as Agnes is the fiercest and most fully-rounded onscreen portrait of Shakespeare’s wife ever seen.

Austin Tichenor shares three takes on Shakespeare’s Macbeth that focus on the human struggle within the tragedy in new and unexpected ways, including a production at the RSC, a novel about Lady Macbeth, and a film for streaming.

Two new productions, Al Letson’s Julius X and the Q Brothers Collective’s Rome Sweet Rome, explore contemporary themes of political upheaval and personal betrayal while illuminating aspects of Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar we might have missed. 

The Improvised Shakespeare Company has been creating hilarious Shakespearean masterpieces—from an audience suggestion of a title of a show that has never been written—for 20 years. Austin Tichenor shares how they do it.

Austin Tichenor rereads Robert B. Parker’s Spenser novels—“with an s like the English poet”—and discovers that the hard-boiled Boston detective’s literary roots go even deeper than remembered.

There’s a new Superman with more than a few Shakespearean echoes. Austin Tichenor writes that it’s no surprise given director James Gunn got his start on a B movie adaptation of Romeo and Juliet.

“Serious actors. No director. One rehearsal. In a bar.” That’s Back Room Shakespeare Project’s motto and it makes for a unique relationship between actor and audience that Austin Tichenor writes enhances the power of Shakespeare’s work.

Orson Welles’s film about Shakespeare’s Falstaff is turning 60. Austin Tichenor rewatches the legendary movie and finds some new things worth celebrating in Welles’s take on the beloved knight.

Austin Tichenor travels back to Elizabethan England with Nicole Galland’s novel Boy about Shakespeare’s acting company member Alexander Cooke in a surprisingly contemporary exploration of gender roles onstage and off.

William Shakespeare’s Hamlet is having a moment—actually two, with A Room in the Castle and The Comedy of Hamlet! (a prequel) exploring Shakespeare’s characters before, during, and after the events of his greatest tragedy.

Are Bob Dylan and William Shakespeare truly solitary geniuses given what collaborative art forms music and theater are? A look at how A Complete Unknown and Shakespeare in Love depict young genius on the rise.