“What if you wrote a series of arti­cles about what takes place on the oth­er side of the prosce­ni­um arch while in an actu­al pro­duc­tion?” pro­posed Mark, the Assis­tant Man­ag­ing Edi­tor of the Cleve­land Jew­ish Chron­i­cle, the week­ly news­pa­per that hired me as its the­ater crit­ic. ​“You know, do a Plimp­ton.” So begins All the World’s a Stage Fright, a laugh-out-loud fic­tion­al mem­oir about a clan­des­tine crit­ic embed­ded in a pro­fes­sion­al pro­duc­tion of As You Like It with the intent of dri­ving up the paper’s read­er­ship. Soon the stunt becomes one man’s per­son­al bat­tle with the Bard, his anti-Semit­ic con­tent, his infu­ri­at­ing iambic pen­tame­ter verse and shar­ing the stage with actors he has panned in the past results in more of a sto­ry than Ash­er Kauf­man expect­ed. Full of twists and turns, endear­ing char­ac­ters, and behind-the-cur­tain action, All the World’s a Stage Fright is a fun-filled and fast-paced novel­la. It is writ­ten for those who love the­ater and, per­haps, need Shake­speare’s gor­geous prose and poet­ry now more than ever.