I laughed so hard that my stomach hurt. I’m pretty sure I shrieked a few times at how brave the actors were with their improvisation and commitment to whatever chaotic world Will had created, but I never laughed as hard as when the ringmaster stomped out to shout, “This is not a fucking pantomime!” as Will was making the audience go “oooooooooh” and “aaaaaaaaah” like a canned laughter track.
Time Magazine called it, ‘Theatre for people who hate theatre.’ Another review said simply, ‘I absolutely hated it.’ High praise indeed which is why my mother, progenitor of the Chaotic Good alignment, booked tickets for our family immediately.
We are ushered into a red-lit room, kind of like a sex dungeon, with a fabric backdrop painted like Verona bearing intelligent graffiti such as, ‘Montagues eat ass,’ and ‘Capulets smell like poo.’ There’s an Ikea trolley in the middle and already we’re onto a delightful start. There is nothing more that I love than theatre not trying to be high brow, theatre that refuses to engage in a bit of light fart sniffing as it is wont to do.
Our ringmaster runs in like Alan Cumming straight out of Cabaret. He explains the rules of this chaotic universe: five classically trained actors will perform a highly abridged version of Romeo and Juliet. The goal? To make it to the end of the play. Why? Because one of them is absolutely fucked off their face.
Knock-off-Alan-Cumming (the electric David Ellis who is very funny) reveals the empty poisons of choice: a polished off bottle of sav blanc and half a bottle of gin. To the audience he passes out a gong, a confetti cracker and a vomit bucket. The vomit bucket is, surprisingly I know, self-explanatory. The cracker and gong? That’s if the actor shows deplorable signs of sobering up. Each can only be used once (except the bucket of course) and our ringmaster coyly refuses to tell us who is shitfaced.
The actors walk on stage sombrely, gravely— actor-ly. Expressions are drawn and serious except for one whose face is cherubim red, eyes sparkling with the kind of mischief that’s only accessible once you’ve reached the astral plane of “munted”. Tybalt/Juliet’s Father (played by the incomparable Will Seaward) has only one goal: to make as much trouble as possible. Also not to fall off the stage.
He looks and speaks like a young Brian Blessed and begins by trying to draw his sword on Mercutio and Benvolio (the wickedly witty duo Flora Sowerby and James Murfitt) until the ringmaster relieves him of the weapon and thrusts a floppy rubber sword into his hand instead. It has the same impressive effect as someone waving around a flaccid penis shouting, “Huzzah!” and “Piew piew zoop.” Then like a magpie spotting a bicycle rider he zeroes in on an audience member wearing a crocheted octopus beanie. Cackling maniacally he plucks it from the poor man’s head with glee and spends the rest of the show wearing it.
He is shooed off stage pretending to be a rather nuisance-y moon (O, swear not by the moon, th’inconstant moon!) and warns, “The tides are going to be fucked now,” as he totters off. Midway through Juliet’s balcony monologue (played by the saintly patient Jessica Brindle) comes a loud, “Heellooooo,” as Will decides to wander back on, trudging up the stairs to warn his daughter about “the vampires” which he reckons is a “really big problem in Verona now.” In an accidental bit of slapstick comedy, Romeo (played by Richard Hughes who is called Tobias Menzies’ and Hugh Grant’s love child) is forced to crouch under the stage for five minutes longer than he should meaning he now resembles something more like Gollum if he were prone to sporting a codpiece and a bedazzled doublet.
Will then fights the entire cast in a scene that makes the Battle of Winterfell look positively tame and even the techies do a bit of ab-lib strobe lighting effect before he realises that killing the entire cast kind of leaves you with nowhere to go. Resurrecting them would be the best way to solve this mechanical problem which is lucky since he reveals that he has been Verona’s vampire problem all along! This means Juliet’s fake death results in actual death as Romeo says in his best iambic pentameter, “I’m just gonna bite you and see how this goes, I guess.” They then live (unlive?) happily ever after. Personally, I think Shakespeare would have loved this. Romeo and Juliet always read like bad YA fiction and the fake death scene needs a bloody good stretch of the imagination to make it work so who’s not to say that Romeo and Juliet walked so Twilight could run?
I laughed so hard that my stomach hurt. I’m pretty sure I shrieked a few times at how brave the actors were with their improvisation and commitment to whatever chaotic world Will had created, but I never laughed as hard as when the ringmaster stomped out to shout, “This is not a fucking pantomime!” as Will was making the audience go “oooooooooh” and “aaaaaaaaah” like a canned laughter track.
I think pantomimes are woefully undervalued since they indulge in exactly the kind of careless and joyful abandon I spoke about in my D&D essay. Sometimes I think that modern theatre has lost its roots— prices are out of most working class folks’ price range and it’s become, at times, completely impenetrable. I love my absurdist boundary-pushing theatre, don’t get me wrong. But what happened to the humble pantomime? To the melodrama, the silliness, the slapstick? Why are we all pretending we are above this kind of glorious communal experience of tomfoolery?
Again I wonder if we’re so afraid of looking silly that we don’t like seeing other people do it. But not once did the show feel cheap or base (despite the set and the premise). Will’s razor sharp wit was not dulled by the drink, only enhanced, which is quite a feat since he was literally legless. And so I think it’s important to stress how beyond the silliness and the absurdity were extremely intelligent, funny, and masterful actors who gave us a live demonstration of an incredibly hard type of theatre: Improv.
I did TheatreSports (improv) at school at it was notoriously hard. You can’t say “No”. You must say “Yes, and?” The minute you contest another actor’s suggestion the scene has lost its seed of possibility and you’re stuck with a boring duologue of: “No there is no pink elephant, Harold, you fucking idiot,” and, “Oh yes there is!” How boring. How uncreative. What about: “Thanks for pointing that out Harold, I see it too. And it’s trying to shag you.” Suddenly we have a scene, we have direction, we have asked our audience to be complicit in not only imagining the first suggestion but accepting the second; we have the power to create worlds together in improv. It’s synergy, it’s lightning quick, it’s brave. We say weird shit when we don’t have time to think about how we look. It’s saying weird shit but then also saying, yep, let’s crack on with it.
The cast, the brilliant and sober cast, said “Yes, and?” to every one of Will’s suggestions. Sure he was corralled and cajoled and literally shunted off stage but they played with him, verbally sparred with him, they met him (drunkenly) where he was and said let’s crack on with it.
How could Shakespeare not be proud?
Key takeaways
I am incredibly impressed that the bucket was never used (and I am reminded of a particularly shameful incident where I once used the platform at Blacktown station as a sort of ad-hoc spew bucket. Probably not my greatest moment).
I love Shakespeare so much. Sorry, it just never gets old. I have seen so many different versions, iterations, experiences, whatever— I have never seen the same play twice. I once saw an all women queer performance of Taming of the Shrew which was incredible. I have also seen Gnomeo and Juliet.
My sibling normally doesn’t laugh out loud, they do more like an internal breathy snort which translates to: “HAHHAHAH,” but in a rare display of delight, they were laughing the loudest in the room.
We were actually sat next to Octopus Man which meant we got primetime seats for a lot of second-hand embarrassment. I shall save face for him by elaborating no further.
Mum, who booked the tickets, is in her “fun” era. When I ask her what this means she just says, “I dunno, just FUN.” So stay tuned for more FUN things! Is that deliberately ambiguous? Yes!
Shit-faced Shakespeare is a UK based theatre troupe who regularly perform at Fringe festivals. Check out their website here to see if you can catch them in the future:
https://www.shitfacedshakespeare.com/
Loved it sweetheart, there used to be pantomimes when I was young, it was a Christmas thing. Lots of fun (family friendly of course). Don’t know where they went but I was taken to see one many years later at Kinselas with the most hilariously camp Dame 😄