Play by Saldarelli ’01 to be Featured in New York International Fringe Festival

True story — five Shakespearian characters walk into a bar: a tortured prince, two tortured kings, and a couple of tortured star-crossed lovers. And frankly, they’re tired of being tortured, forced to die horrible deaths, night after night, for 400 years. Who’s to blame? Why, the Bard, of course.

“They’re not happy!” explains playwright/lawyer Matthew Saldarelli ’01, about Getting Even with Shakespeare, his one-act play featured in the New York International Fringe Festival. “If you’re in a romantic comedy like A Midsummer Night’s Dream, great. But he killed off all these characters!”

In modern dialogue, Hamlet, King Lear, Macbeth, Romeo, and Juliet bicker about who dies most gruesomely, plot revenge on their creator — with the help of a lawyer named Matt — and nickname the aspiring-actress bartender “Ophelia” (because Hamlet drives her crazy, of course).

Saldarelli, 31, general counsel for a Manhattan hedge fund, came up with the idea for Getting Even with Shakespeare as a first-year student at Holy Cross, for the final paper in Helen Whall’s 20th century Shakespeare adaptation class (earning an A from the notoriously tough grader). Ten years after that original 45-minute version debuted on a tiny stage in Room 519 of the Hogan Campus Center, Saldarelli revised and expanded the play, first for a twice-extended run in Manhattan Repertory Theatre’s Winterfest 2010, and now as one of 200 plays in the Fringe Festival, for a 175-seat off-Broadway venue.

“I’d always considered myself an attorney who wrote something,” says the Boston College Law School graduate, “but the theater community is treating me like a real writer — it’s kind of strange!”

Passing strange, indeed.

Performances: Sat., Aug. 14, 2:15 p.m.; Fri., Aug. 20, noon; Tues., Aug. 24, 6:45 p.m.; Wed., Aug. 25, 7:30 p.m.; Fri., Aug. 27, 7 p.m. The Players Theatre (FringeNYC Venue #10), 115 MacDougal St. Purchase tickets ($15 in advance, $18 at the door): fringenyc.org, (866) 486-7619. Information about Saldarelli’s play: www.gettingevenwithshakespeare.com.

By Sarah Saffian