‘Shakespeare’ gets a lot of credit — but performer should, too

One could be forgiven to pooh-pooh yet another play that lays out William Shakespeare’s bona fides as a hip-hop icon, the original bar spitter who beefed with plenty of his contemporaries while dropping sick flows all over Elizabethan England.

While the concept of Shakespeare’s street cred as the ultimate OG emcee has been lampooned in plenty of places, what cannot be discounted is that everyone who has fallen in love with The Bard at some point did so for the very first time. The initial experience of Shakespeare’s meter leads to a world of discovery of a man who quite literally changed the world with witticisms and insight and has shaped every corner of humanity since the 16th century.

In Jacob Ming-Trent’s deeply personal solo show “How Shakespeare Saved My Life,” playing at Berkeley Repertory Theatre through March 1, those discoveries were enhanced by his own chaos, often paralleling some of Shakespeare’s most conflicted male characters. The connection to hip-hop comes from a more personal space; the music encompassed his Pittsburgh upbringing, as he listened to the hardened, grizzled poetry of Tupac Shakur and The Notorious B.I.G. Those street-wise poets helped Ming-Trent make sense of his own complicated life with parents who couldn’t fully love him for different reasons. But with Shakespeare, whose characters felt so familiar inside rules of prose and iambic pentameter, Ming-Trent found a poetry partner to hep him through life’s brutalities.

Delightfully directed by former Berkeley Rep artistic director Tony Taccone, Ming-Trent proves a joyous performer who dedicates his play to balancing out every great element for an effective solo show. His cadence is authoritative, reminiscent of Charles Dutton’s classical training, and he can attract rapt attention from an audience.

Acting as a profession requires grit and determination, and the the success rate from those who attempt it is staggeringly low. Taking any job to survive while chasing auditions throughout New York is a brutal existence, but in Ming-Trent’s case, it was even more so.

His bus ride to the Big Apple at 17-years-old was a risk born of drive and delusion. He was armed with only his love for Shakespeare that started in the 7th grade. It was his own naivete that made him believe that Shakespeare’s characters were built for a Black man outside of Othello.

This was reflected in his training, before Black actors commonly took on the great Shakespearean characters. To play Shakespeare was to do it like Olivier, because gatekeeping Shakespeare meant keeping out anything other than white actors.

But where Ming-Trent found his advantage is where Shakespeare works best — in the pain of a character. His honest journey meant that his interpretations of Hamlet or Aaron came from the darkest reaches of his soul.

It was not just Shakespeare who saved Ming-Trent’s life, but his friend Popeye who put an angelic hand on him before his own demise on a bad drug deal. It was those in his newfound crew who learned about his prolific lyrical dexterity through some fierce and terrifically executed rap battles. They knew he was not one who belonged among them, because they’re survival existence was not built for Ming-Trent’s life that fit more into the potential thriving category.

The show’s thrill exists in how it understands its rhythms. Ming-Trent’s training allows him to stop the show on a dime and deliver soliloquies with a transcendent warmth fueled by hot, bated breath. Whether it’s Macbeth’s devastation of his pointless existence in the soliloquy “tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow,” or Hamlet’s wrenching struggle with his own mortality in “To be or not to be,” Ming-Trent calibrates beats beautifully, bringing his truthful narrative to his “congregation.”

While the show’s best moments are both hilarious (his recollection of getting arrested while imagining everyone demanding he play Othello) and devastating (a final conversation with his mother), the play’s conclusion undercuts its own effectiveness, reaching into the well for a final audience connection that feels contrived. An honest ending is there for the taking if Ming-Trent is looking to put a much firmer button on what was built for the previous 110 minutes.

Ming-Trent is not the first or last to credit The Swan of Avon with saving his life. But based on all those who also helped save him so he can thrive today, there is no doubt that Shakespeare, among so many others who shed their blood with him, can now claim him as a brother.

David John Chávez is a former chair of the American Theatre Critics/Journalists Association and a two-time juror for the Pulitzer Prize for Drama (2022-23); @davidjchavez.bsky.social.

‘HOW SHAKESPEARE SAVED MY LIFE’

Written and performed by Jacob Ming-Trent, presented by Berkeley Repertory Theatre

Through: March 1

Where: Berkeley Rep Peet’s Theatre, 2025 Addison St., Berkeley

Running time: 1 hour, 45 minutes, no intermission

Tickets: $25-$135; berkeleyrep.org