Larking about for laughs is what this 90-minute romp is about, all done, thanks to Liz Cooke and Alexander Stafford, on a minimalist set that’s aesthetically pleasing and beautifully lit.
Filled with all the chaotic, make-shift-style fun of a student review, visually enhanced by the comical wonders of dressing-up-box costumes, ridiculous wigs and laughable props, the show pummels us with silly skits, daft jokes and endless interplays of banter between the three performers – plus some pretend bouts of projectile vomiting. Auditorium antics and pantomime-style audience rapport and involvement are key in maintaining the show’s long-lived success – and oh, yes, Shakespeare’s thrown in, too, of course – thrown in, thrown up, thrown down and out, chucked around, mumbled, mangled and (once or twice) beautifully expressed. Roller-coaster changes of pace and direction lurch from frenetic wordiness and rapped rhymes to static, prolonged silences, punctuated sometimes, alas, by the terrible twang of a ukulele.
It was in the 1980s that 15-minute versions of Romeo and Juliet and of Hamlet were busked on the streets of San Francisco Bay, these stories still taking pride of place in the stage show. In 1987, The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (abridged) was performed at the Edinburgh Fringe before taking countries by storm worldwide, and the comic spoof even holds two Guinness World Records: the first as the longest running Shakespeare “play” in the West End (1996-2005); the other for highest altitude performance (on an Easyjet flight on Shakespeare’s birthday in 2014). With updates, tweaks and reinventions reflecting shifts in society as time passes, the show is co-written by director Adam Long with Daniel Singer and Jess Winfield.
Energy, enthusiasm and total commitment flow from the engaging performers, Efe Agwele, Tom Bovey and Kiran Raywilliams (apart from at odd times when they go AWOL) as they embark on this condensed ride through 37 Shakespeare plays. “Thirty-seven!”, you cry, “But that’s impossible – especially when much of the show is taken up with banter, interruptions and large slices of audience participation.” You’re right, of course: it is impossible – unless you cheat. Then you can even have a go at popping in 154 condensed sonnets.
Since the Bard borrowed his comic stories in the first place, then recycled the formula over and over again, the 16 or so comedies are amalgamated into one rapidly mangled mish-mash. Meanwhile, the King histories are covered by characters tossing a crown from one to the next to the next. Job done. That leaves ample time for Hamlet, West Country Polonius, Yoric’s Ozempic-ridden skull, gallumphing, water-drenched Ophelia and her Freudian Ego, Id and Superego (played by the entire audience) to get several accelerating cracks of the whip (without Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, though, who have a play of their own). There’s loads of time, too, for Romeo and his gallumphing Juliet to perish, for truncated Othello to leave us wanting more, and for tartan-clad, ginger-wigged Macs to perform the Scottish play in unintelligible ancient Scottish. Chip-chop Titus Andronicus gets a gory cookery show all of his own. Poor Coriolanus, though, has such an unfortunate ending – owing to the last four letters of his name – he must be omitted altogether, while others get but passing mentions. In spite of brevity being the soul of wit, Brian Blessed and Louis Theroux are in the mix, too, Shakespeare’s lines being much interspersed, interrupted and readjusted to accommodate modern-day twists and meanderings.
Just once or twice, his lines get delivered “straight” and then the soaring sparkle of words and meaning captivate on the instant, proving the magic, genius and splendour of the Bard are a million miles from ever being boring.
And after all the mayhem, naturally, the rest is silence.
Eileen Caiger Gray
