Play On Julius Caesar Debuts: “Friends, Americans, Countrymen, Lend Me Your Ears.”

Play On Podcasts is simply genius.

It reimagines Shakespeare’s timeless tales, featuring original musical compositions and the voices of extraordinarily gifted artists. The podcast is remarkable in so many ways. The original music is delightful and enchanting. The acting bristles with emotive energy. The plays they re-enact are much more Laurence Olivier in Hamlet than Mel Gibson in Hamlet. The scripted plays facilitate Shakespearean humor, wit, and sarcasm to flow through them.

Most importantly, the plays are scripted in modern English verse for modern audiences. Therefore, the age-old excuse that you don’t like Shakespeare because you can’t understand the words has vanished.

My first play of Play On was Othello, which began in September 2023. The play was broken up into seven episodes of about 35 minutes per episode. Then, Play On releases bonus content, typically with the playwright who reimagined the Shakespearean classic in modern verse or one of the actors. The October 13, 2023, bonus content of Othello with playwright Mfoniso Udofia was inspired, with Udofia explaining how to handle the conversion of words from old English to modern language, especially the racial epithets.