[2015029] Shotspeare presents Romeo & Juliet
Shotspeare @ Garden of Unearthly Delights – Umbrella Revolution
10:45pm, Sun 15 Feb 2015
I’ve typed it a squillion times on this blog: I love me some Shakespeare. I also love me some drinking. The idea that the two could be combined? Brilliant.
Or that was what I thought when I plonked Shotspeare into my Schedule, anyway… but experience has taught me that while having a boozy eight-show day is difficult enough, trying to do that on a forty-degree scorcher is a good way to physically bludgeon oneself.
As a result, I walked into Shotspeare’s performance of Romeo & Juliet completely sober… and that made me stand out from the crowd, the majority of whom would be comfortable with Fez Faanana’s 2:30am Fringe Club “double-fist that shit” last-drink calls.
The premise for Shotspeare’s performance is the tongue-in-cheek interpretation of The Bard’s work by five actors, assisted by one audience member (carefully chosen to be not too sozzled… initially), during which they all drink copious amounts of beer. Along the way, three audience-held “Shotspeare” cards could be played at any time, forcing the entire cast to neck vodka shots… resulting in an increasingly silly rendition. Luckily, the audience member chosen was pretty adept onstage, and comfortable with the extra tasks issued unto him via the occasional “Speech Wheel” interlude (he received the Spank, Saltines, and Drink “rewards”).
The performance was actually pretty solid – sure, it’s played for laughs with costume tomfoolery (problematic balloon breasts, ahoy!) and an occasional production aside (the shadow puppetry sex scene, to the tune of NIN’s Closer, is oh-so-right in context). Sure, there’s a few throwaway lines that remind me of Sound & Fury’s “ad libbing”, but for the most part it’s genuinely entertaining as the cast get increasingly drunk: two of the “Shotspeare” cards were played in the first five minutes (at the same time), with the third not long thereafter.
And I would’ve been happy with that, if it were not for other sections of the audience. It appeared that a good percentage of the crowd felt that their own inebriation allowed them to partake in the action as well; the cast did a pretty good job of keeping many of the more unruly peeps under control whilst encouraging the more entertaining outbursts, but the really drunk guys who had sat in the front row seemed to be in a world of their own: a world in which they would cackle in glee after yelling “Suck him off!” at the stage. Every couple of minutes.
And that’s the thing, really. I reckon that Shotspeare would be a brilliant experience in the right (i.e. sozzled) state of mind, with the right (i.e. not-a-random-Garden-wad) of people. As it was, I was left a little disappointed by this performance of Romeo & Juliet: entertained, yes, but some of that entertainment came from my own misanthropy. And that’s never really a good thing.
(29) Shotspeare presents Romeo & Juliet: Liberally sozzled interpretation. Stellar audience participation. #ff2015 #ADLfringe
— Pete Muller (@festivalfreakAU) February 15, 2015