[NoHo Arts District, CA] – A NoHo Arts theatre review of My Life with Will, an evening with Will Shakespeare and James Sutorius at the Whitefire Theatre.
James Sutorius has had a long and very interesting career as an actor. He has been in just about every TV show you can imagine over the years…all the good ones. But the stage is his real love and particularly Shakespeare, which is what this absolutely brilliant and legendary solo show is all about.
James takes us on a long and winding tour of his life as an actor from high school to Broadway and everything in between.
It’s charmingly more like a conversation than a play. One way of course, but a conversation with the most interesting person you have ever met. It’s beautifully written and told in chronological order but with wonderful meandering asides and selected pieces of his favorite soliloquies thrown in for good measure.
None of this is at all trite or contrived. It unfolds organically, authentically and with one anecdote after another all leading intriguingly to the present day. You get the distinct feeling, in fact, that one performance is never quite like the next. There seems to be some level of improvisation but, to be honest, he’s such a brilliant and believable actor that the whole thing could be scientifically rehearsed and you would never know.
James Sutorius is one of those rare actors who can make you feel as if you are the only other person in the room -even in a very crowded theatre. He sweetly chats and comically imitates.
He plays with his audience, picking out people in the front row to speak his absolutely phenomenal Shakespearean lines to. He is utterly mesmerizing. He knows the words so intimately that it feels as if he is speaking them for the very first time.
He has that uncanny ability very few actors have to surprise you with something you have heard a hundred times before. Making it feel fresh, new, and unentangled by its history. In short, he is the real thing…
I particularly enjoyed the way he describes his love for theatre in ways that are so accessible, so meaningful and evocative that we wonder why we don’t feel exactly the same about our own chosen careers. He’s inspiring, funny, real. And every time he begins passages from Hamlet, or As You Like It, or one of the Richards there is hardly an inflection point. You move seamlessly from his life and his words to someone else’s and words first spoken four centuries ago. That really moved me. I don’t really mind if I see a fluffy Shakespearean production. Honestly, I’m usually grateful to be there and always hopeful they get it right. But James Sutorious’s Shakespearean turn of phrase is so impeccable, so sublime that he makes me want to watch every excellent movie, find every brilliant company and immerse myself in the Bard. He reminded me why Shakespeare is so damn good, what sets him apart – his timeless deeply personal prose. He’s in the room with you when you read a play. You can almost feel his eyes on you watching to see if you actually get it.
Well, if James Sutorious speaks the lines I know I always will.
This solo show is running for the next few weeks and I urge you to go and see it. You won’t find a more entertaining piece of theatre, solo or otherwise. I guarantee it!
And if you love Shakespeare…and I do… then this perfect, wonderful solo exploration of one man’s love for Shakespeare will fill your heart and soothe your soul. My Life With Will is truly exquisite heartfelt theatre.
Where:
Whitefire Theatre
13500 Ventura Blvd, Sherman Oaks 91423
When:
Saturday, September 7 at 8PM
Sunday, September 15 at 7PM
Sunday, September 22 at 7PM