Wed. Feb 13- Sun. Feb. 24

       In all of English literature, there is no writer who has had a brighter spotlight shined on his life than William Shakespeare. Having written over 30 plays, the Bard of Avon has inspired hundreds, as well as thousands of books, dissertations, odes, tributes, and more. Among the most profound of today’s Shakespearean scholars is playwright, producer, and professor Robert Brustein. As the founder of both the Yale Repertory Theatre and our own American Repertory Theatre, Brustein has helped spawn some of the brightest stars in the contemporary theatrical firmament. As a playwright and scholar, he has also been able to bring his own ideas to the stage and to students of the arts around Boston and around the world.

      This is the seventh year Brustein has served as a distinguished scholar in residence at Suffolk University and used their beautifully-remodeled Modern Theatre to stage his renowned Shakespeare Trilogy. (It's been produced over four years.) Part I, the Pultitzer Prize-nominated drama The English Channel focused on Shakespeare’s legendarily alleged affair with the woman known in his work as “the Dark Lady”.  The second play, Mortal Terror, focused on the infamous Gunpowder Plot and the writing of the perhaps more infamous play Macbeth. On February 13, the curtain will rise on the final piece of Brustein’s exploration of Shakespeare’s life. The Last Will depicts the playwright’s return to Stratford near the end of his life, looking back on his years of struggle and success in London and facing deteriorating health and problems at home. His mental faculties failing, Shaksepeare becomes confused about the distinction between fiction and reality; the stage and real life, and is tempted by his famed friend and colleague Richard Burbage to mount one final triumph.

     “Shakespeare comes home to Stratford towards the end of his life,” Brustein explains, “sick, feverish, and confused, to imagine that his wife, Anne, has been unfaithful with his dying brother, Gilbert, and that his younger children are illegitimate." With so much on his mind, it is easy to see how even a great mind like Shakespeare could become confused and overwhelmed.

     “He is unable to distinguish himself from his own characters,” Brustein says.Speaking of characters, The Last Will (which is being co-produced by Commonwealth Shakespeare Company), features Actors Shakespeare Project Director Allyn Burrows as Shakespeare, Broadway veteran Brooke Adams as his wife Anne Hathaway and the captivating IRNE Award-winner Jeremiah Kissel (who also appeared in Terror and many other Brustein productions) as Richard Burbage.

      However, it is Brustein’s mind and words (and those of Shakespeare himself) that play the starring role in this complicated but enlightening production. When asked what fascinates him (and so many others) about Shakespeare, Brustein suggested that it is his mastery of language and character and his “knowledge of the human heart.”

     “He writes plays that, as Ben Jonson said, were not of an age but for all time,” Brustein says. “And the fact that what we know about him, from his work and from historical records, is so ephemeral and tantalizing, makes the investigation of his life and works an everlasting process.”

     As for his inspiration for this particular production (and perhaps for the entire trilogy), Brustein credits the “imaginative biographical flights: of fellow Shakespearian Stephen Greenblatt (author of the seminal chronicle Will in the World). “I thought I might be able to detect enough recurrent themes in his work,” Brustein suggests, “to allow me to speculate and dream about the man he was at three different stages of his life.”

      As a trilogy, Brustein’s cycle has been able to deal with the different “stages” in Shaksespare’s stage-bound life in an efficient and provocative way. When asked whether he originally intended to write a trilogy, however, Brustein demurs that he “can't remember,” but adds that much of the material for the trilogy “came to me in dreams, so I guess I was obsessed to write at least three plays about the man.”

      While they may have been inspired by his own imaginings, this reimagining of Shakespeare’s final days was also based on a great deal of scholarly research. “I used…the historical records, Shakespeare's writings, and my own dreams to write the piece,” Brustein explains, noting that “about 80% of it is historically accurate, or at least historically plausible.”

    Despite the tripartite aspect of the story, Brustein suggests that theatre-goers need not have seen the other two in order to enjoy, understand or appreciate The Last Will. “It is true that Will's disease was transmitted by his affair with the ‘Dark Lady,’” he admits, referring back to the first play, “but that is fully explained in The Last Will.”

      So, whether you know who “The Dark Lady” is or whether you cannot tell Henry IV from Henry V, there is plenty to learn from and enjoy in The Last Will. As for the lesson Brustein hopes people will come away with?

    “I hope one thing the play will help to do is to discourage all this nonsense about Shakespeare not having written his own plays,” he says, adamantly. “Shakespeare's legacy… lies in these plays…[They are] ‘A birthright whose beneficiaries are as numberless as the stars.’”

Tickets are $45 on opening and Saturday nights; $40 general; $30 seniors; and $10 students.

- Matt Robinson

525 Washington Street,800-440-7654 or go to  www.suffolk.edu/moderntheatre/events.html