Entertainment

We’re all on Bard with it

Sir Ian McKellen (left) and Sir Patrick Stewart will headline in “No Man’s Land” (above) and “Waiting for Godot.”

Sir Ian McKellen (left) and Sir Patrick Stewart will headline in “No Man’s Land” (above) and “Waiting for Godot.” (Kevin Berne)

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Everything old is new again — at least it is this fall, when Broadway’s hottest tickets are plays by Pinter, Williams, Beckett and the Bard.

Just look who’s performing in them: Daniel Craig, our reigning James Bond! Orlando Bloom, fresh off the “Pirates of the Caribbean” boat! Zachary Quinto, minus his Mr. Spock ears! Plus Patrick Stewart, Ethan Hawke, Billy Crudup, Cherry Jones and many more.

But the man of the season — all seasons, really — is Shakespeare. On the heels of the summer’s double-header in Central Park (“The Comedy of Errors” and “Love’s Labour’s Lost”) comes “Macbeth” (previews begin Oct. 24 at the Vivian Beaumont), this time with Hawke as the overly ambitious Scot.

Also headed our way: all-male performances of “Twelfth Night” and “Richard III” (alternating performances starting Oct. 15, Belasco), featuring Stephen Fry and Mark Rylance, and not one but two productions of “Romeo and Julie
t.” At least they won’t be butting heads — Elizabeth Olsen’s playing Juliet off-Broadway (Oct. 16, Classic Stage Company) while Bloom and Condola Rashad (“Stickfly,” “The Trip to Bountiful”) take Broadway (Sept. 19, Richard Rodgers).

Is this town big enough for two sets of star-crossed lovers? “I think so!” says David Leveaux, who’s directing Broadway’s “R&J.”

“These plays are so rich, they can be mined indefinitely and can never be caught in a single production.”

The one he’s directing takes the family feud a bit further: Bloom’s Romeo and the rest of the Montague clan are white, Rashad’s Juliet and the other Capulets are black.

Nevertheless, says Leveaux, “I don’t want it to be a commentary on race . . . We’re just trying to [make] the play into something alive and present.”

Besides, he says, the chemistry between his stars is “electrifying.”

More great chemistry’s expected from Pinter’s “Betrayal” (Oct. 1, Ethel Barrymore), thanks to real-life couple Daniel Craig and Rachel Weisz (“The Constant Gardener”). Rafe Spall plays the third link in their love triangle, and Mike Nichols is directing. The Tony committee is salivating as we speak.

Another royal pair teams in Pinter’s “No Man’s Land” and Beckett’s “Waiting for Godot” (Oct. 26, the Cort): Sir Ian McKellen and Sir Patrick Stewart, who played sold-out shows of “Godot” in London. Joining them here for both plays, in alternating repertory, are Crudup and — following his memorable turn as a 600-pound gay man in “The Whale” — Shuler Hensley.

“Our first day of rehearsal was like the first day of school,” Hensley says of prepping for the Pinter. “Two sirs are in the room and they’re nervous, so yeah, Billy and I can afford to be nervous, too!

“There are all these aha! moments in Pinter,” he continues. “A lot of the things that aren’t said are as important as what is . . . It’s definitely something Patrick and Ian thrive on!” Let’s hope director Sean Mathias can make sense of it all.

Yet another British director’s in town this season: John Tiffany, the guiding light behind the Tony-winning “Once,” is tackling Tennessee Williams’ “The Glass Menagerie.”

Starring Cherry Jones (“Doubt,” TV’s “24”), Zachary Quinto and — as the delicate girl who collects little glass animals — Celia Keenan-Bolger, the production played the American Repertory Theater in Cambridge, Mass., last winter. Critics there called it “exquisite.”

“Williams is like your Shakespeare,” Tiffany tells The Post. He calls “Menagerie” his “favorite play of all time,” and says he found his Amanda Wingfield — the tough-minded Southern mother of the piece — when he heard Jones, a Tennessee native, reading aloud letters from her parents in her mother’s voice.

“At first she was very reluctant,” he says. “I think she found it a depressing play.” But he begged her to do a reading of it anyway. “She was incredible,” he recalls. “She turned to the last page, looked at me and said, ‘When do we start?’ ”

As far as Quinto’s concerned, Tiffany calls the erstwhile “Star Trek” star “a wonderful stage creature who seems to understand [his role as] Tom,” Amanda’s son. “It’s Tennessee’s own life he takes us back to — a portrait of a gay man and his mother and sister. Not that the play has a homosexual agenda,” Tiffany adds, “but it’s clear to us that that’s the world it’s in.”

He says his stars are aligning beautifully, both onstage and off, where “they can do a lot of damage to a bottle of bourbon!”

We’ll drink to that.