In what has already proven to be a banner year for Shakespeare in New York—Al Pacino’s Shylock on Broadway; Sir Derek Jacobi’s King Lear at the Brooklyn Academy of Music—the best may be yet to come when the Royal Shakespeare Company takes over the Park Avenue Armory to stage seven of the Bard’s masterpieces in repertory, some just hours apart, over six weeks. (Look out for up-and-comer Mariah Gale [above] as Juliet.) The residency (July 6 to August 14) involves a complete reconstruction of the RSC’s theater, assembled in Stratford-Upon-Avon and ferried across the Atlantic in 36 containers. “It’s pretty bonkers,” says Michael Boyd, RSC’s artistic director, of the project, which is the most logistically complex in the company’s 50-year history. “But we knew that the only way to bring our work over was in its natural environment.”
