Entertainment

Woman’s broad study of the Bard’s works

Tina Packer’s survey of Shakespeare’s female characters, “Women of Will,” clocks in at almost three hours. And that’s the abbreviated “overview”: Starting in April, Packer will also perform extended versions of the five parts that make up her show, in five separate performances.

That’s a lot of Shakespeare, but then Packer has spent a lot of time with him. The former artistic director of Shakespeare & Company in Massachusetts, Packer, now 74, has dedicated decades of her life directing and acting in the Bard’s plays. As for “Women of Will,” she’s been working on it for the past 15 years.

Needless to say, Packer knows her stuff. You’ll leave the Gym at Judson having learned a thing or 10, which is more than you can say about many classes. And let’s face it, the show, directed by Eric Tucker, gives out such a pedagogical vibe that you’re tempted to offer Packer an apple at the end.

The evening is split between alternating modes: spiels about the Bard’s treatment of female characters throughout his career and the re-enactment of key scenes by Packer and co-star Nigel Gore — whose reserve and bulging biceps suggest an amiable construction worker in his mid-50s.

They start off with Katharina’s final speech from “The Taming of the Shrew,” which Packer performs in three different modes: manic, cutie baby-doll and depressed.

She then proceeds to argue that Shakespeare went through five distinct phases in the way he portrayed women. During his middle period, for instance, they were truth-tellers. Except that if they did so as women, they suffered horrible fates; if they were in drag, they could do whatever they wanted.

Packer’s didactic interventions are loose but not fast, since she tends to ramble and linger on self-satisfied chuckles. Still, they provide a helpful frame to decode an entire body of work.

She and Gore do a good job of setting up each scene, but those portions of the show are wildly uneven. Packer is technically accomplished, but she’s long past playing ingenue — the magic of theater only goes so far. In general, it’s also hard to really get into bite-size chunks out of context.

Which is why the effective pocket recap of “Macbeth” stands out. The age thing isn’t so glaring, and Gore and Packer perform several scenes tracking the relationship between the murderous couple, using a flashlight for ambiance. That bit takes place in Part 4 — in case you just want to catch that one when Packer starts her spinoffs.