The year 2021 saw the staging of Zadie Smith’s debut play, The Wife of Willesden. An adaptation of Chaucer’s “The Wife of Bath’s Tale,” from his Canterbury Tales, Smith changed the setting from Arthurian England to modern London. In her version the character is an outspoken lady named Altiva, a local gossip who gabs endlessly in pubs. Altiva’s hilarious monologues alternate between present-day scandals and a prologue set in 18th-century Jamaica. As in the original, Altiva speaks in couplets. Unlike the original, there’s a lot of twerking. After its sold-out 2021 run, the show is back. Indhu Rubasingham directs. —Jensen Davis