New York’s Frog & Peach Theatre Company is known for finding a unique angle to every one of their productions—and that includes some of the most vaunted plays of all time. After a successful staging of William Shakespeare’s As You Like It, the Frog & Peach team are back with their version of King Lear. Artistic director and company co-founder Lynnea Benson joined me to discuss the show—which is running at the Theatre at St. Clements through Feb. 18—as well as how Frog & Peach continues to grow on and off stage.

Brittany Frederick: Frog & Peach has been firing on all cylinders over the last year, with both original plays and well-known works like Shakespeare. How would you describe the company’s creative direction as it moves into 2024?

Lynnea Benson: St. Clements is a wonderful step up for us in terms of venue. You might not have heard of St. Clements, but it’s a it’s a very nice venue right in the heart of the Theater District. We’re delighted to be there at 423 West 46th Street. Some wonderful shows have played there.

Greg Mullavey is wonderful as King Lear. Most folks know him from his off-Broadway and Broadway work, [such as] Clever Little Lies with Marlo Thomas. The Soap Myth, which was inspiring and wonderful, about a Holocaust survivor. And of course, our own Titus Andronicus…. We’re tickled to death to have him back. Later this year, we’re planning free performances of our children’s plays at various venues here in Manhattan, and we’re planning a tour of the three boroughs, too. Tinkerbell Theatre’s very popular. You can also check out Tinkerbell Online, our viral hit series, on YouTube and Facebook. It’s had over a million viewers and we’re we’re thrilled about that, too.

Later in the season, we’re going to be doing a full production of both Verbatim and College Fun, two very provocative plays that are new. [Verbatim] stars Estelle Parsons; it’s a terrifying play. Sort of a gothic comedy, but very timely and very, very interesting. And College Fun, [which is] sort of a descent into academic hell. Something for everyone in a DEI office at an exclusive California university.

Shakespeare has always been and will always be popular on the stage. Frog & Peach has had great success with a number of Shakespeare plays. What do you think has made your interpretations of his work so popular?

Newcomers—especially people who maybe think Shakespeare is not for them—are very surprised. We have turned more New Yorkers on to the joys of Shakespeare probably than anybody else, and the data backs it up. Shakespeare, the way we approach it, is very easy to understand. I think a lot of Americans get the wrong message from media and popular culture that Shakespeare is like rocket science; it isn’t really. It’s very easy to understand when it’s in the right hands.

We have one of the most diverse audiences to be found anywhere. Grandmas from Iran, people under 16—whole classrooms from various underserved schools come in, thinking well, maybe I’m gonna understand this, maybe not. And they sit there startled at the end saying, I understood everything. This isn’t what I was told to expect from Shakespeare. We take pride in that.

We do spend a lot of time rehearsing, because we have to understand what we’re saying if you’re going to understand what we say. Frog & Peach is also known for breaking the fourth wall and speaking directly to the audience, as they did in Shakespeare’s time… There has to be a balance between what an audience expects and what you deliver. And fortunately, Frog & Peach rises to what we what we claim, and that is really thrilling entertainment for people of all ages, all backgrounds, all ethnicities. It’s a really fun thing to watch kids from an underserved school sitting right next to lawyers from Riverside Drive.

How would you describe this take on King Lear?

We do cut a little bit [from the text], but we never modernize the language or shoehorn it into some [modern setting]; it doesn’t need that. We have wonderful designers—Dennis Parichy, Drama Desk Award winner, to design our lights. We have Asa Benally, a fabulous designer, to do both our sets and costumes.

King Lear is a very simple story. Everybody knows what it’s like to have sibling conflicts, favoritism, poor parenting, mental illness and caring for an older family member—who’s lively and frisky and sometimes a little dangerous. I think it speaks to a lot of New Yorkers, whatever their backgrounds. There is some really, really scary stuff in King Lear. Some really disturbing things in King Lear. There’s also a lot of sexual content too. So just be warned; it’s not your mama’s King Lear. It’s a little harrowing, but fun.

For people who haven’t seen previous productions, what can they expect from this cast? Some are Frog & Peach veterans and others are newer additions to the company.

Greg Mullavey is just fabulous—and Greg Mullavey’s understudy is also fabulous. I’m so lucky to have him. His name is Laurence Cantor and he’s just a terrific actor. Jonathan [Reed] Wexler as Edmond will chill you to the bone. He’s just as sweet and as nice as can be… and then he does things. DazMann Still, who was in College Fun [and] who was just a joy to work with, has come aboard as Edgar—a man who feigns mental illness to escape his father’s wrath. The decency and humanity and beauty of this Frog & Peach newcomer really has to be seen.

Amy Frances Quint as Goneril; people adored her as Rosalind in our recent As You Like It. They’re going to see a whole other side of Amy Francis Quint, and I promise they will lose sleep over it. Camelia Fuertes had a small role in As You Like It and just rocked it, and she’s marvelous as Regan. David Elyha is glorious as Gloucester. John L. Payne as Kent brings tremendous humanity to a very tricky role—a loyal friend of Lear, who in disguise goes through hell.

Eric Doss plays the Fool, and what he brings to this role makes you proud to be a human being. Eric is wonderful in everything he does, but this particular character speaks to the mission you have to have to be a performer. The Fool has to be a performer as he goes through storms and torture and terrifying conditions; it’s just thrilling… It’s real comfort for for anybody who who works in the arts or or works with people or is lonely in their job.

Lenyn Hernandez [Marcia], who has the patience of a saint, is our stage manager; Teresa Perez is our ASM [assistant stage manager]. And I’ve already mentioned our designers!

As artistic director, how do you balance the calendar between doing established plays like King Lear that are recognizable to audiences, and exploring new works?

The Frog & Peach mission is to serve as many New Yorkers as we possibly can. One of our programs is arts education that serves weekly arts classes, to formerly homeless adults with mental illness, or other neurophysical disorders. We serve children are ages four to 15, and we do theater crafts with them. We also do Shakespeare and method work and sensory work and improv, film studies [and] visual arts.

Our New Play program grew out of a yearning to do more new and different kinds of plays….We were looking for new plays that speak to modern New Yorkers’ lives. Mid-pandemic, we put out a request just to a few people in our network, and we got some astonishingly good work. And we thought, we’ll find a way to develop it; we’ll find a way to produce it. If you’re a New Yorker and you’re over age four, we’re going to entertain you. We’re going to make theater as normal as going to a ballgame or going to the park.

That’s what Tinkerbell Theatre does for kids. It’s thrilling to bring theater to the youngest audiences, especially folks who may not have the income to go see a traditional children’s play at some other well known venue. We like to keep the performances as low priced as possible, because every kid deserves exposure to performing arts that are fun, that the whole family can come to. Part of the reason we started Tinkerbell Theatre [was that] I had comps to a very expensive children’s play. I was sitting up in the nosebleed section and I looked across the aisle, and there was this dad and his little girl. They could barely see anything. They were all dressed up and I thought, “We’ve got to do better.” And so Tinkerbell Theatre was born. And Shakespeare—once people know Frog & Peach, Shakespeare is not a hard sell. But we want to reach as many people as we possibly can with this King Lear, because it will just rock people’s world.

Frog & Peach Theatre Company’s King Lear is on stage now through Feb. 18. To purchase tickets and for more information, visit the website. Photo credit: Both images by Maria Baranova/Courtesy of Skollar PR.

Article content is (c)2020-2026 Brittany Frederick and may not be excerpted or reproduced without express written permission by the author. Follow me on Twitter at @BFTVTwtr and on Instagram at @BFTVGram. For story pitches, contact me at tvbrittanyf@yahoo.com.