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- Two Wives and Ten Husbands: A Comparative Reading of The Wife of Bath’s Prologue and The Wife of Willesden’s Prologue (DBpia) This paper juxtaposes two literary works, Geoffrey Chaucer’s The Wife of Bath’s Prologue in The Canterbury Tales (1386-1400) and Zadie Smith’s The Wife of Willesden’s Prologue in The Wife of Willesden (2021).. Download the pdf to read the entire article.
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- Smith, Wendy. "NSFW: Chaucer's Bawdy Wife of Bath Gets a Modern Makeover in Zadie Smith's 'Wife of Willesden'." Boston Globe (Online), Feb 23 2023 (ProQuest) Chaucer gets a 21st-century reboot in Zadie Smith's rollicking verse drama, which will be playing at the American Repertory Theater's Loeb Drama Center in Cambridge from Feb. 25 to March 18. “The Wife of Willesden” reinvents his Wife of Bath as the much-married Alvita, a Jamaican-born British woman holding forth in a pub on Kilburn High Road. The Southwark tavern where Chaucer's pilgrims made their storytelling pact has been moved across the river to Brent, Smith's North London home borough, and the dialogue swaggers with the pungent local accents that have enlivened her novels from “White Teeth” to “Swing Time.”
- Aucoin, Don. "A Free Spirit Soars Beyond Convention in ART's 'the Wife of Willesden': Novelist Zadie Smith Sets a Story from Chaucer's 'Canterbury Tales' in the Present-Day." Boston Globe, Mar 03 2023, (ProQuest). Presented by the American Repertory Theater at the Loeb Drama Center, and directed with verve by Indhu Rubasingham, “The Wife of Willesden" is essentially a feat of storytelling about storytelling. Novelist Zadie Smith ("White Teeth") has adroitly adapted Chaucer's 14th-century “The Wife of Bath's Tale," from “The Canterbury Tales," transporting the action from the medieval period to the present day, perhaps to suggest the persistence of misogyny.
- Sinclair, Jacquinn. "In a London Pub, 'the Wife of Willesden' Isn't Holding Back." Boston Globe, Feb 24 2023 (ProQuest) There's a feeling that British actress Clare Perkins gets when she reads an intriguing role, a “fire" of sorts that makes her want to take part. So when she learned of the character Alvita, the leading lady of author and essayist Zadie Smith's book and first play, “The Wife of Willesden," which the American Repertory Theater is presenting Feb. 25-March 17, Perkins knew it would be “a good character to bring to the stage."
- "Theater Medieval manner - Chaucer gets an update in 'Wife of Willesden'." Boston Herald (MA), sec. Features, 19 Feb. 2023, p. 25. (NewsBank: Access World News) Zadie Smith’s reimagining of the Canterbury tale, “The Wife of Willesden,” became a smash hit in 2021 at the Kiln Theatre, which is situated in the Northwest London neighborhood where Smith sets the action. Smith has modernized the tale while keeping the lead character closely connected to Chaucer’s original text — “The Wife of Willesden” makes its stateside debut at the American Repertory Theater Feb. 25 to March 19.
See also:
- Aucoin, Don. "Ingenuity Meets Virtuosity in Manual Cinema's 'Frankenstein'." Boston Globe (Online), Feb 23 2023 (ProQuest) With any given theater production, the audience typically sees the finished product, not the behind-the-scenes process. But Manual Cinema's “Frankenstein” turns that formula on its head by allowing us to see both the logistics and the act of creation simultaneously. The result is a fascinating, freshly imagined take on a horror tale that has been subject to countless adaptations in the two centuries since Mary Shelley wrote it.
- Sullivan, James. "Manual Cinema has Created a Monster, but it's Not Your Typical 'Frankenstein'." Boston Globe, Feb 19 2023. (ProQuest) Before she became a cofounder of the innovative Chicago performance troupe Manual Cinema, Sarah Fornace attended the University of Chicago, where she studied literature and biology. “I always thought I was going to be a scientist," Fornace says, “so getting to play a mad scientist actually is very fun." That would be Dr. Frankenstein. More than a dozen years into Manual Cinema's unique body of work, which combines film, theater, puppetry, music, and sound design, it makes perfect sense to Fornace that she and her colleagues have adapted the classic cautionary tale about the perils of scientific progress.
