'What Silent Love Hath Writ'

At the Brooklyn Academy of Music this month, the Harvey Theater reclaims its original name--the Majestic--with the arrival of director Sam Mendes's beautiful renderings of Chekhov's Uncle Vanya and Shakespeare's Twelfth Night.

For his swan song after a triumphant ten-year tenure at London's Donmar Warehouse, the versatile Mendes (director of many acclaimed productions, including Cabaret and The Blue Room, as well as the films American Beauty and Road to Perdition) has ingeniously paired these plays, which have just completed an award-winning three-month run at the Donmar. He has linked them with a stellar ensemble featuring Simon Russell Beale and Emily Watson, and with his own vision of what these masterpieces are about.

That vision is projected, literally, above the stage as the audience enters to be seated for both productions, which are playing in repertoire at BAM until March 9. "O learn to read what silent love hath writ" (Shakespeare, Sonnet 23) is bannered high above the scenes of country life in Uncle Vanya as well as over the candle- and lantern-lit world of Twelfth Night. That vision is then played out on designer Anthony Ward's spare sets, lit by Hugh Vanstone (re-created for BAM by David Holmes), in productions that shine like those lanterns with clarity, simplicity and humanity.

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