REVIEW: Shit-Faced Shakespeare, Leicester Square Theatre ✭✭✭✭

The cast of Shit-Faced Shakespeare. Photo: Rah Petherbridge Shit-faced Shakespeare Leicester Square Theatre 26th April 2016

4 stars

Book Now The official website for Shit-faced Shakespeare, the unholy offspring of Magnificent Bastard Productions, describes their show as “the deeply highbrow fusion of an entirely serious Shakespeare play with an entirely shit-faced cast member.” It has developed a great deal of traction in recent years; not only has it been performed on both the Brighton and Edinburgh Fringe, but it is currently also performing in Texas, Massachusetts and Boston. It is an extremely promising premise – guaranteeing a novel evening. Nevertheless, it inspires a certain amount of suspicion. Surely there wouldn’t actually be a drunk cast member? Wouldn’t it be dangerous? And wouldn’t a drunk person performing on stage be incredibly obnoxious? The show opens with Lewis Ironside, the director of Leicester Square Theatre’s ‘shit-faced’ production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, enthusiastically explaining what is to follow. The designated drunk actor – who rotates after every performance – is indeed for real, having been drinking non-stop during the previous four hours. All precautions are taken to ensure that this is a safe, enjoyable evening for both the audience and the cast. The third question is a trickier proposition. For some of you (albeit not the ones likely to book tickets for a show called ‘Shit-faced Shakespeare’) the prospect of seeing a drunk actor perform some of the most beautifully constructed scenes in the theatrical canon is utterly hellish – like watching a stranger’s karaoke.

I cannot comment on the type of performance you will see if you buy tickets for this show. Drunk people are, by their nature, highly erratic, and a drunken Hermia would no doubt have opportunities not gifted to a drunken Lysander, and vice-versa. All I can say is that I found it an extraordinarily enjoyable experience. The opening scene, a complex dance shared between the two sets of lovers, perfectly exemplified the gloriously silly premise, with one actor desperately failing to appear as sober as the others. Indeed, many of the biggest laughs came from the contrast between the emotive, professional performers and their rambling, shambling colleague, whose inadequacies compelled many inspired pieces of improvisation. For this reason, the drunk performer does not monopolise the production – the sober actors are afforded ample comic opportunities as they attempt to explain a character’s incoherent behaviour in the context of the narrative.

At 70 minutes, this A Midsummer Night’s Dream is a rather stripped down affair – Oberon and Titania are absent and, save from a tremendously inventive cameo by Bottom, so are the Rude Mechanicals. This is to the company’s immense credit. The actors are given real opportunities to engage with their characters – Stacey Norris’s obsessive, lustful Helena and Beth-Louise Priestley’s rightly agitated Hermia would have graced any ‘serious’ production – but without allowing the premise to wear thin. Perhaps the drunk actor broke the fourth wall more frequently than I would have liked (though you can hardly blame them), but they certainly did not outstay their welcome. The production was performed with such joie de vivre that you could not help but fall in love with its anarchic soul, and marvel at its ludicrosity. Shit-faced Shakespeare is a tremendously entertaining show, which makes the most of its promising premise. With a talented cast of actors and a well-judged script, it becomes so much more than a novelty – as director Lewis Ironside so beautifully explains, “We are such stuff that dreams are made on, rounded with a little sleep”.