Shakespeare: Young and Old and New
Whitney Center Theatre Group
Whitney Center
200 Leeder Hill Dr.
Hamden
Aug. 29-30, Sept. 3-4, 2026
The kids might just be all right, if a Saturday performance of Shakespeare by pairs of teens and seniors was any indication.
The performance took place at the Whitney Center senior living community, a series of scenes from Shakespeare plays performed by duos comprised of local high school students and Whitney Center residents.
Actresses Anna Oppenheimer and Evelyn Krevolin kicked off the first of eight scenes Saturday. They acted out a classic scene as Juliet and Nurse, respectively, discussing a secret message from Romeo.
The clock struck nine when I did send the Nurse.
In half an hour she promised to return.
Perchance she cannot meet him. That’s not so.
O, she is lame! Love’s heralds should be thoughts,
Which ten times faster glides than the sun’s beams, exclaimed Juliet (Oppenheimer)
I am aweary. Give me leave awhile.
Fie, how my bones ache! What a jaunt have I! replied Nurse (Krevolin), humorously delaying the message’s delivery.
Oppenheimer and Krevolin acted with chemistry and a playful energy that reached even the seatless audience members crowded into the auditorium’s entrance. After they took their bows, Oppenheimer gently led Krevolin to her chair in a touching moment.
Saturday was filled with tender cross-generational scenes like this the Greater New Haven for the intergenerational show conceived by director/Whitney Center Theatre Group co-leader Michael Rose. The high school students and seniors had been working on this play together all summer. Bonds had been formed.
Typically, Whitney Center productions feature just the residents. Rose wanted to try something different for the group’s fifth production.
“I've just always believed that the relationship between the generations is very central to Shakespeare,” said Rose.
Rose wanted the focus to be on the acting. So every actor wore a uniform black, and there was little stagecraft. The most we saw in terms of props were an orange cushion, crown, basket with “flowers,” and a knife. There was no soundscape save for a trumpet sounding and ethereal music piped in a couple of scenes.
They had a small budget, and an even smaller team. With the help of a part-time assistant director, Rose was responsible for auditions, casting, directing, publicity and acting.
There wasn’t a need for extra theatrics, though. Rose selected scenes featuring older and younger characters, including Henry IV and Pericles in addition to Romeo and Juliet and King Lear. Each actor gave a nuanced and expressive performance (it turns out one can do a lot with hands and simple body language) and the storytelling in the carefully selected scenes was captivating.
One would not have guessed that Shakespeare was initially a foreign language to some of these students. By now fluent, the students had clearly spent more time studying their acting binders than they did scrolling Instagram.
Prior to performing, the actors even broke down their scenes in plain English to ease comprehension for the audience.
“The next scene is about a topic near and dear to my heart: elder care,” said actor Victor Altshul to a tittering crowd, before launching into a blistering depiction of King Lear. His energy never waned as he waved his fists like a madman, wrenching his silvered hair and cursing his ungrateful daughters. (Perhaps 80 is the new 50.) In rehearsals, Altshul revealed he had acted in Shakespeare productions before. His experience showed.
Another actor, Andrew Kelly, who played a formidable Pericles, has a PhD in Shakespeare from Princeton. He helped Rose select some scenes for Shakespeare: Young and Old and New.
Rose, too, demonstrated command of Shakespeare’s work as he acted with the group, his long limbs taking up the stage imposingly. Rose studied acting and comparative literature at Yale University during undergrad; he wrote his thesis on Shakespeare. He studied acting at the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art.
More recently, he has come up with a sensational act: The Wheel of Outrageous Fortune. In the act, someone spins his wheel, Wheel of Fortune style. The wheel contains 21 monologues from Shakespeare. Whichever monologue the wheel lands on, Rose must perform from memory. This year, he has been bringing the wheel as a pre-show game to Elm Shakespeare Company’s Much Ado About Nothing performances in Edgerton Park. He even brought the game as far as Stratford Festival in Ontario, the biggest Shakespeare festival in North America. It’s been a hit.
At the end of Shakespeare: Young and Old and New Saturday, the warm stage lights cut off dramatically. Accolades poured from the multigenerational audience: “Bravo!”, “Oh my God, that was amazing!” One by one, people cornered Rose and the actors as they descended from the stage.
“That was the best Shakespeare lesson I’ve ever had!” one woman told Rose.
“That was a gutsy decision, but you pulled it off,” said a gentleman.
A few folks complained that the high school students spoke too fast. But what can you do? “I can’t understand my grandkids,” crowed the Shakespeare lesson woman.
Ah, the intergenerational exchange could only go but so far.
For Rose, it was gratifying to see people new to Shakespeare grow to embody his characters. “I definitely came to have a lot more faith in young people's ability to feel and embody Shakespeare, if given the right guidance.”
"Shakespeare: Young and Old and New" is free and open to the public. The next show dates are Thursday, Sept. 3 and Friday, Sept. 4 at 7:30 pm at the Cultural Arts Center in the Whitney Center’s South Building.
