‘Better than the movie’

Plays and musicals are so often adapted as movies that hardly anyone notices. It’s much less common for a film to find its way back to the stage.

But that’s the case with the stage version of the 1998 Academy Award Best Picture and Best Screenplay winner Shakespeare in Love, adapted by Lee Hall — with input from the late Tom Stoppard, who co-wrote the screenplay — and first produced in 2014.

“Frankly, the play is even better than the movie,” says Terri McMahon, who is directing the comedy for the Colorado Shakespeare Festival’s 2026 season. “The play captures what is special and delightful about the movie, while being its own animal. It’s more satisfying than the movie because you are part of the magic.”

A mashup of comedy, whodunit, romance, history, fabulation, gender disguise, theater rivalry and Elizabethan social hierarchy, the play features everything from dogs to music to jokes, both inside and outside and plenty of Easter eggs for fans of Shakespeare and late 16th-century history.

McMahon describes it as a “remarkable, fantastical piece of fan fiction.”

Suffering writer’s block while working on a (lousy) new comedy, Romeo and Ethyl the Pirate King’s Daughter — which is to include a dog, at Queen Elizabeth’s request — young Will Shakespeare is short of cash, short of inspiration and failing at romance until he meets the beautiful, enigmatic Viola and is inspired to write one of his most famous plays. Theirs is a star-crossed affair, but this is no tragedy.

“There is a certain ecstatic quality to the play,” McMahon says. With glimpses of past and future works by Shakespeare, the story is ultimately about “how Shakespeare became Shakespeare.”

The 19 cast members have their work cut out for them, playing multiple roles not just in Shakespeare in Love, but also Twelfth Night. And yes, there is a connection between the two plays — but no spoilers here.

“You’ll see everybody in both, playing more than one role,” says McMahon, a veteran director and actress who has worked with both the Oregon and Santa Cruz Shakespeare festivals.

… to say nothing of the dog, or rather, dogs. In the play, Queen Elizabeth’s request is fulfilled, though not in the way she expects. CSF auditioned some 30 local canines before tapping Bernie the wire fox terrier and Pippin, a mini-poodle mix, to share duties onstage.

“I don’t think the dog auditions could have garnered any more attention than if Sir Ian McKellan had been named to the cast,” McMahon says with a laugh.

Tickets for CSF’s 2026 production of Shakespeare in Love are on sale now at coloradoshakes.org.