One Sonnet Glory: Adam Pascal Is Something Rotten!'s New Shakespeare

Adam Pascal is about to learn just how sexy but hard it is to be the Bard. The Tony nominee and Broadway.com Audience Choice Award winner will take over the role of Will Shakespeare in Something Rotten!’s final weeks on the Great White Way. He steps in for Eric Sciotto, the former understudy who is scheduled to play the role through November 6. The musical comedy is slated to close on January 1, 2017.

Pascal admits that he doesn’t have much previous character research to draw on. “I’m not nearly as educated enough to know much about Shakespeare, so he might be rolling over in his grave,” he told Broadway.com. “I read a number of his plays in high school, but I always had a hard time getting past the language. But maybe I’ll get a chance to get a better understanding of him now.”

Channeling the Bard—knowledge of his folio or not—and making him sexy is a new challenge for Pascal, but it’s one he welcomes. “I always try to push myself in directions that are unexpected for audiences to see me do,” he says. “This is just another left turn for me.”

Pascal can find elements of Something Rotten! and the new role in his musical theater past: There’s the musical comedy element seen in his last Broadway stint in Disaster!, a rock-star edge similar to his Tony-nominated turn in Rent and Memphis, and the smarm and cockiness of Chicago’s Billy Flynn or Aida’s Radames.

Speaking of, erm, cockiness, how does Pascal feel about a certain signature Something Rotten! costume piece? “Everyone keeps talking about this codpiece! As they say in comedy, bigger is better. The bigger the codpiece, the better, as far as I’m concerned.”

The codpiece-clad Pascal will join a cast at the St. James Theatre that currently includes Rob McClure and Josh Grisetti as Nick and Nigel Bottom, Leslie Kritzer as Bea, Brad Oscar as Nostradamus, Gerry Vichi as Shylock, Catherine Brunell as Portia and Andre Ward as Minstrel.