“How Shakespeare Saved My Life” is a funny, lively and inspirational performance

Let me say this right from the start: Jacob Ming-Trent, the writer and performer of How Shakespeare Saved My Life, is a national treasure. He should be sought out wherever and whenever and in whatever he chooses to appear. He is a being of quicksilver, deftly handling all the parts in this masterful look at the course of his life — not an autobiography, as he is quick to say, but a testimony. He is brilliant, a pure joy to watch, and off-Broadway’s Public Theater has wisely given him a stage to let him work his magic.

His magic is in his writing as well as his acting, and Ming-Trent pulls no punches in relating his life story. When he was twelve, his mother threw his father out of the house, taking over the strict upbringing of their only child.

Not an athlete, he finds a strength in the power of words — in particular, those of William Shakespeare, which lead him into an aspiration of becoming an actor. After one night, when 16-year-old Jacob breaks curfew and comes home smelling of alcohol, his mother throws him out of the house. Heading to New York, he tries to get theatre work. 

An acting teacher tells him he is too fat, too black, and not cultured enough to play Hamlet or any other Shakespearean role, which only makes young Jacob more determined than ever. But as a high-school dropout with little acting experience, life is rough. He searches for his father, now an alcoholic and a junkie. Reaching out to his mother for forgiveness, Jacob is told she wants nothing to do with him. One night, he finds a gang which he feels he can belong with, and takes up drinking and drugs with his new family of choice. Graveside revelations about Jacob’s parents lead to a catharsis.

Under the direction of Tony Taccone, Ming-Trent is given free rein to show off his tremendous skills as a writer, skillfully blending fact with fiction to create a lively, moving performance piece. In one scene, auditioning for Macbeth, he gives the casting director two contrasting interpretations of the “Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow” soliloquy, one as Ian McKellen, the other as himself, and makes both seem equally valid.

He takes the congregation — his term for the audience — through an absurdist nightmare experience at the Public Theater during a performance of Othello. Complete strangers accost him, insisting that he should play Othello — a role he does not want to play — building up to a confrontation with police outside the theatre. Each character Ming-Trent portrays has their own unique persona, achieved by changes in voice and bearing.

In just 90 brief minutes, Jacob Ming-Trent takes us through decades of his life with an emotional range that a larger company might be hard-pressed to display. He uplifts, explores, amuses, shocks, and astonishes us with his performance, and it is a great gift he bestows upon his congregation.

I cannot more strongly urge you to head to the Public Theater to watch this magnificent actor perform his own story and find out How Shakespeare Saved My Life.

How Shakespeare Saved My Life is a Red Bull Theater production presented in the Shiva Theater at the Public Theater, 425 Lafayette Street in New York, through Oct. 25. For more information or to purchase tickets, go to publictheater.org.