Re-playing Shakespeare in Asia includes sixteen essays which were mostly presented at a seminar led by the volume editors at the VIII World Shakespeare Congress in Brisbane, Australia, in July 2006. The introduction, written by Poonam Trivedi, helpfully explains that the essays ‘detail twice as many different Asian theatre forms, their histories, and their development via their interaction with Shakespeare, providing, in addition, an accessible entry into these somewhat unfamiliar theatrical cultures for the uninitiated’ (p. 3). Less helpful, especially in the context of a collection devoted to Shakespearean productions within Asian theatrical traditions, is Trivedi's working definition of ‘performance’ as ‘an adaptation of the text’ and of ‘intercultural performance’ as ‘further reposition[ing] the text’ (p. 8) – hence the concept of ‘re-playing’ Shakespeare in localities which are far beyond the context of his own theatre, both temporally and geographically. A recent, alternative understanding of performance and adaptation has effectively defused the tyranny of the text, both within and beyond anglophone traditions. In Shakespeare and the Problem of Adaptation (2009), for example, M. J. Kidnie suggests how a dramatic work is best understood as a dynamic process shaped by the work of those who, over time, produce it on stage, on the page, or in the classroom, and not as the origin of subsequent textual and theatrical reproductions. This understanding of text, performance, and adaptation would seem to be essential to the progressive integration between the study of what are more traditionally regarded as ‘canonical’ versus ‘foreign’ or ‘exotic’ appropriations of Shakespeare in contemporary theatres worldwide.

Far more productive and exciting is Trivedi's conviction, shared by others, that ‘the intensive actor training programs, the long-standing performative traditions with their intimate relation with their audiences, and the freedom to improvise within given conventions – the defining characteristics of Asian theatres’ (p. 14) – can radically change the way in which Shakespeare is performed and studied within and beyond Asia. Also particularly valuable, in this respect, is the range of productions and localities covered by the volume contributors, and especially by those who focus on less-familiar directors, practitioners and traditions, including John Emigh's account of multiple gambuh productions of Macbeth by Balinese director I Kadek Suardana (pp. 291–307) or Bi-qi Beatrice Lei's analysis of contemporary Taiwanese productions of Romeo and Juliet, which, by ‘localizing, modernizing, stylizing, and even trivializing the Bard’, forcefully adapt Shakespeare to a Taiwanese aesthetic which ‘patroniz[es] the vulgar, the ostentious, and the anarchistic’ (pp. 308–23, 308). Equally interesting are the essays devoted to more mainstream productions, some of which have toured to the West, most prominently Ninagawa's kabuki adaptation of Twelfth Night, which, according to Minami Ryuta, ‘re-play[ed] varying negotiations and conflicts in Shakespearean performance in Japan’ (p. 82).

Overall, this rich and thought-provoking collection is a welcome and timely addition to recent studies focusing on Shakespeare in Asia and charting, more generally, what Trivedi aptly describes as a ‘surge of creativity in Asian theatre’ (p. 2).