In Shit-faced Showtime: Oliver With A Twist one actor's gotta sink a bottle or two before curtain up.
Photo: Rah Petherbridge Following their run at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, Shit-faced Shakespeare’s all-singing, all-dancing, all-drinking sibling, Shit-faced Showtime, returns to London with an intoxicated spin on the widely-loved literary and musical classic. Join Oliver Twist as he meets an array of cunning and colorful characters in this cockney knees-up with’ booze, glorious booze, featuring songs from Oliver! and other Broadway hits.
Brought to you by the Fringe phenomenon Shit-faced Shakespeare, Shit-faced Showtime is a combination of professionally trained musical theatre performers and copious amounts of alcohol. Featuring intricate harmonies, complex choreography and one entirely shit-faced actor every night...What could possibly go right?
The cast for Oliver With A Twist includes Alan McHale (Dodger and Oliver), Christopher Adams (Bill Sykes/Fagin), Elizabeth Rowe (Nancy/Dodger), Issy Wroe Wright (Nancy/Oliver), Jessica Hern (Nancy/Oliver), Nick Moore (Fagin) and Tom Tilley (Bill Sykes/ Dodger).
So how does it work? Each performance has a cast of actors, who all arrive 4 hours before the start of the show for a ‘party’ – however this party is dry for all but one performer, who gets Shit-faced. The rest is a balancing act between the songs as they appear in the sheet music and the improv rules, which state you must go with WHATEVER the drunk actor decides to do. “Yes, and…” rather than “No, but…”. Every single show is a one-off. Every single performance has a different drunk actor. Every single time they are genuinely inebriated.
Producer and performer Issy Wroe Wright says “Magnificent Bastard Productions are proud to be back and bigger and more bladdered than ever. With our brand-new look and fresh reprobates ripe (strawberries, ripe) for the picking, we can’t wait to get our drunken mitts on this cockney classic.”
Magnificent Bastard Productions are a UK and America-based theatre company comprised of actors, writers, producers and friends, whose ethos is grounded in staging fun and frivolous adaptations of shows with a Shit-faced twist. Since 2010, Magnificent Bastard have been bringing their versions of Shakespeare’s greatest works to audiences in Austin, Edinburgh, Boston, all over Australia, Brighton, Atlanta and London. In 2015 they launched their inebriated venture into Musical Theatre. They have since played sell-out audiences in Edinburgh, Brighton and London with their own versions of The Pirates of Penzance & The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. Shit-faced Showtime: Oliver With A Twist will be presented at the Leicester Square Theatre from 5 - 9 September 2018.
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Mark Ludmon has been a journalist for over 20 years, specialising in writing about theatre and the arts as well as bars, pubs and drink. He has been on the theatre judging panel for London’s Olivier Awards and has a masters degree in English literature, specialising in Elizabethan and Jacobean drama. He has an MA in theatre research, criticism and dramaturgy from the University of London’s Royal Central School of Speech & Drama. You can find him tweeting about theatre as @MarkLudmon and writing about theatre at markludmon.com.
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