Thanks to shows like The Lovers at Theatre Royal Sydney, Bell Shakespeare’s Romeo & Juliet and Belvoir St Theatre’s The True History of the Life and Death of King Lear and his Three Daughters, Shakespeare is back – and in non-traditional ways. Contemporary theatre makers are having fun with his texts, adding in musical numbers, emphasising contemporary themes, updated costumes and fresh contexts.
Of course, this is not a new phenomenon. Baz Luhrmann did it in 1996; 10 Things I Hate About You modernised The Taming of the Shrew and The Lion King was Hamlet Disneyfied. Yet it is unusual that so much Shakespeare is playing across so many stages, in so many different ways, at the same time.
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Lasting appeal
But was Shakespeare’s work ever out of vogue? Not according to Andy McLean, a writer and podcaster who has written for Bell Shakespeare for more than a decade. He suggests that one aspect of Shakespeare’s enduring appeal is how present his works are. They are everywhere, lurking beneath a text’s surface if one simply looks.
‘Shakespeare exists in our world without us even knowing it,’ McLean says. ‘He’s inspired hip hop artists and pop artists, there’s been jazz albums about him, his characters are mentioned in Taylor Swift songs. And you don’t need to know about Shakespeare to enjoy them.
‘There are people who see Shakespeare as a museum piece, but I think the beauty of Shakespeare is that you can perform the original scripts on stage in all kinds of different ways,’ he explains.
For playwright and composer Yve Blake, another aspect of Shakespeare’s appeal is the timelessness of his themes. Blake, who created the hit musical Fangirls, is currently working on Mackenzie, a camp take on Macbeth where the eponymous character is a 13 year old girl who lands a role on a hit kids television show; the production has been programmed in Bell Shakespeare’s 2026 season.
Blake says the creation of Mackenzie was in part about wanting to make ‘a really silly show for the girls, gays and theys’.
She continues: ‘Macbeth is a banger, but for me it was the themes of that work that just felt so eternal. I think the way that he writes about ambition, I was like ‘oh, this is what it is to thirst for fame in the contemporary era’. And the way that Macbeth becomes king, but then how will he stay on top? For me that’s the story of a pop girl in 2006. The themes he’s dealing with are themes that don’t go away.’
Adaptations: out with the old, in with the new?
There is a clear interest in reimagining Shakespeare for modern audiences. Indeed, many new Shakespeare productions change the original text, frequently its language, or at least edit the texts heavily. But this does not make the adaptations any less faithful.
McLean notes that even back in Shakespeare’s time, productions of his plays were staged differently – making the only ’original’ version that which played at opening night.
For Blake it’s an exercise in remixing: ‘A massive theme in Macbeth is masculinity, right? And in my interpretation, our Macbeth is a little girl. Instead of Lady Macbeth needing to borrow Macbeth’s power because she’s a man, Ruth, Mackenzie’s ruthless stage mum, has to borrow her power because she’s young.
‘And so this theme of one person having privilege the other doesn’t have becomes actually about youth, which feels like a contemporary topic. But then there’s other themes which translate with like no editing, like deception – which is in entertainment history, you know, controlling optics.’
Shakespeare’s allure
Constant re-interpretation keeps Shakespeare’s work fresh and is partly why his writing endures. But there are various reasons why the original texts continue to be recognised, including the author’s status. Almost 500 years after his birth, Shakespeare continues to be acclaimed as the world’s best known playwright, making him a nightmare for the average secondary school student (deservedly or not). Another reason is that his writing still holds up. He knows how to tell craft a script and tell a story.
Most pertinently, it’s because Shakespeare’s plays continue to reflect human society. His characters, with their flaws and dreams, are still believable. The pressures they face, whether from the societies they live in or their egos, are relatable at their core.
This relevance is an idea shared by actor and director Jules Billington, who believes Shakespeare’s work, and its themes – the human experience, relationships, autonomy and power – ‘will never be outdated’.
Shakespeare: a theatrical, economic, and artistic lifeline
Adaptations make Shakespeare accessible to contemporary audiences. It’s one of the reasons his plays are so essential to the live performance landscape, particularly given the economic challenges the industry is facing.
They give frameworks for new productions and the staging of more shows, presenting a much needed financial lifeline to Australian theatre, while simultaneously appealing to more traditionally-minded audience members and subscribers. Making theatre approachable to new demographics is a key force behind Blake’s work.
‘Accessibility is such a driving tenet in what I make,’ she says. “We all know that we are working in an art form that faces an existential crisis. Like, how do you convince the next generation of theatregoers that theatre is important as we feel it is, when they’ve never had more options when it comes to entertainment?
“That’s why I really like to centre and consider teenage theatregoers in so much of my work, because they’re our future,” she says.
Just as importantly, new productions of Shakespeare expose new audiences to reimaginings of his work. They challenge the perception that his plays are confined to a time period, social attitude or classroom setting. Because of the fun to be had casting such well-known texts in different lights, his work will be continue to be adapted.
Such adaptations will play out alongside the productions which align more closely to Shakespeare’s original vision, like shows running in schools or crafted for Shakespeare ’purists’. Those are just as important and vital too, economically, artistically and academically.
How, then, do Shakespeare’s works resonate, and what do they offer modern audiences? For McLean, they offer ‘entertainment and the chance to see ourselves’. For Blake, they endure because of their language and themes. And for Billington, they provide ‘the same thing all good theatre offers an audience: the chance to feel alongside each other and leave changed by the experience’.
Belvoir St Theatre’s The True History of the Life and Death Of King Lear & His Three Daughters is playing until 4 January 2026.
This article is published as part of ArtsHub’s Creative Journalism Fellowship, an initiative supported by the NSW Government through Create NSW.
