‘Beowulf,’ as it was told
Looking for a little excitement? How about spending the afternoon with a couple of hungry monsters, one fuming dragon, and a fearless warrior ready to face all three? Members of the Harvard community and beyond can do just that at a reading of the 3,182-line poem “Beowulf” in its original Old English at the American Repertory Theater’s (A.R.T.) second stage, Oberon. The free reading of the ancient epic on Thursday afternoon is open to anyone curious about the tale, or just looking to sample a little Old Anglo-Saxon. “We often do this out-loud reading of ‘Beowulf’ for fun because we love the poem, so we thought: ‘Why not have it be almost a lead-in’” to the A.R.T. play, said Harvard College Fellow and medieval scholar Steven Rozenski, who along with Matthew Sergi, a colleague at Wellesley College and sometime A.R.T. actor, collaborated on the reading with producers of the theater’s current production,...