What do you get when a group of seasoned thespians is tasked with performing Much AdoAbout Nothing, only one member of the troupe is thoroughly, utterly inebriated? Sh!t-faced Shakespeare proves that the result is an evening of sheer delight.
The cast takes on a condensed version of Shakespeare’s beloved comedy of witty skirmishes, playful trickery, and weddings gone wrong; it sufficiently resembles the original but takes liberties, such as combining Don Pedro and Don John into one role (which works surprisingly well), in order to fit the action into just over an hour. This is evidently a company of well-trained, professional actors, all of whom stir up moments of hilarity even in their entirely sober state. Flora Sowerby makes a captivating Don John, giving a performance so camp it is reminiscent of a pantomime villain. And I don’t think many others could pull off breeches and a codpiece so well.
The focus, though, is of course on our nightly drunkard, who in this instance was Beth-Louise Priestly in the role of Shakespeare’s feisty yet lovable heroine Beatrice. To ensure the safety of their actors, the cast works on a rotating basis, and each member is expected to drink no more than four times in one month. A compere (think of this as the sober friend who drags you stumbling home after you’ve had a few too many) is present onstage throughout to supervise and ensure that the drunken cast member does not behave in ways that endanger themselves or others. In this case the only real risk was becoming the unwitting recipient of a lap dance, à la Magic Mike, or having a t-shirt launched at you.
If the concept of the show invites scepticism as to how drunk the actor actually gets, this is quickly quashed as the compere reveals how much they have had to drink in the four hours prior to the show starting. From the moment Priestly walked onstage as Beatrice, it was clear that Sh!t-faced Shakespeare is no gimmick – she was well and truly hammered. Between persuading the 1000 person-strong audience to collectively flip off the techy, to raising the alarm for a non-existent fire, her antics proved rip-roaringly funny and disruptive to the progression of the play. At points she impressively managed to blurt out her lines verbatim to Shakespeare’s script, but most of the time she muddled through them or, to great collective amusement, rewrote them altogether.
Watching the other cast members attempt to steer the play in the right direction only added to the fun as they hopelessly surrendered to the chaos she inflicted, such as extorting Benedick to kill Claudio ‘in a sexy way’. Two more drinks, multiple disrupted nuptials, and many lap dances later, the play staggered towards its happy, if somewhat fumbled, end. The atmosphere amongst the audience leaving the theatre was nearly as merry as Beatrice herself.
Sh!t-faced Shakespeare is a gleeful, riotous show, a bawdy spin on the classical theatre we all know and love (or hate). It is not hard to see why this joyful show has returned to the Fringe for another sell-out run.
Sh!t-faced Shakespeare is on at varying times at Pleasance at EICC until 25 August.
Tickets available here.
Press image provided by Pleasance Press Office.