←Recommendations of The Venetians

I'm on this website as a playwright, but playing Iago in the staged reading of this at The Atlanta Shakespere Company was a vicious little delight.

It's a sumptuous play, full of language actors love to say, dealing with powerful and ever-present issues. Fantastic roles for a multitude of people. Recommended to anyone, but particularly to theatres that primarily stage classics. You owe it to yourself to read this play.

This play gives me goosebumps with its brilliance and spiraling plot that brings so much around in its whirl. On the lookout for its full stunning production...

A marvelous take on Shakespeare bringing the classic to the present day and the issues we consistently face. Well done.

An absolutely ingenious and brilliantly theatrical play that is in conversation with Shakespeare's work and tackles the universality of themes such as outsidership, alienation, assimilation, and racism. The dialogue is immensely readable and also profoundly lyrical at times. The worlds of R+J, Othello, Merchant, and Titus are woven together in such an unexpected yet seamless fashion. The central conversations about race and belonging both do justice by characters who are given short shrift by Shakespeare himself, while also echoing contemporary ways people compromise their identities to fit into spaces that don't and seemingly never will welcome them.

Barbot has connected the worlds of Titus Andronicus, Romeo and Juliet, Othello, and the Merchant of Venice together to create commentaries that critique the Bard, our society, and an exploration of what it means to assimilate when one has been othered. Barbot's writing blends the Bard's own language into this new take on familiar characters that will make you laugh and cry. There are heartbreaking moments in this play that any minority in this society has gone through in some form. I've never felt so seen by Shakespeare's characters till reading this play.

I just experienced this play via an online reading produced by Kane Repertory Theatre.

What a stunning script. Epic in scope, lush in its use of language, opulent in its theatricality, compelling in its storytelling, and most importantly, unrelenting in its intelligent parallels to contemporary issues, Barbot's THE VENETIANS is a thrilling work from a master playwright.

I loved this play for its clever weaving of several Shakespeare plots to shed light on the thoughts and motivations of characters who are often maligned in the originals. Each scene is like a special surprise to see how Matt will connect the dots. A very thoughtful and studious examination of Shakespeare that is inventive and refreshing."

This is a truly epic play. I'm astounded by the way Barbot is able to interweave these plays and characters. It's a play about the mistreatment of marginalized people by Shakespeare and us today. It's a play that needs to be produced and part of the canon. Instead of doing Othello or The Merchant of Venice, do this play!!

This play is the real definition of "Awesome". The way these famous Shakespeare characters are woven to together to make this exquisite play feels like the first time I read Angels in America. Not only am I incredibly moved but also deeply wounded through this rich empathic narrative. It cuts deep to feel not just what Matt Barbot is sharing with us but to gain a deeper understanding that these hateful events have been happening since Shakespeare and even before. We have to do better.

It's just incredible. The seamless weaving together of these classic narratives and characters makes every single point shine through. I appreciate plays in which I can actively think about the themes and this one does so perfectly. Honestly, Matt Barbot does what I refer to as "plant seeds" throughout the narrative that come to fruition. The use of language and foreshadowing: perfect. Imagery and truly human characters: even better. What a fantastic read!