A most impressive and culturally adroit improvised take on the bard’s idiom.
Billy Shakespeare, eh? What a lad. Sure: there are sonnets and sublime passages aplenty, but he also invented the “your mum” joke (Titus Andronicus) and the concept of the critic (Love’s Labour’s Lost). Yeah, that’s The Reviews Hub gazumped, by about four hundred years.
There are two types of Shakespeare adaptations: the stuffily pretentious and the bawdily ramshackle. Impromptu veers comprehensively towards the latter, with the added advantage that they’re making all this nonsense up on the spot, and it will never have to be performed again, never mind be scrutinised by bored A-Level students.
The setting helps. Brighton Open Air Theatre is a beautiful space, offering a real intimacy between stage and crowd, and it’s difficult to be too pompous or stuffy when your soliloquy is in danger of being drowned out by birdsong.
The Impromptu Shakespeare company are a mix of experienced improvisers and talented Shakespearean actors in their own right. Ailis Duff, here most memorable as a finger-clicking faerie henchman, was recently Banquo at the Rose Theatre, for example. These people know the material inside out, which is why they mess around with it with such glee, love and care.
The show is based on audience suggestions, here delivered via ping pong balls, riotously, which immediately breaks down any remaining barrier between performer and punter. Vague themes and archaic professions established (fletching, anyone?), any remaining audience nerves are removed by the introduction of Mr Bumhole, an extremely silly character who is never seen or heard of again.
As if by magic, a plot emerges. There are silly wagers, fantastical creatures, and big themes of war and breaking the cycle of violence. Jules Munns, of local improv group The Maydays, seems the vague cast leader, and who breaks the fourth wall most often and most amusingly, at one point ransacking various audience picnics in search of things with which to grease his wager-forming hands.
It’s an anarchic and high energy show. There are laughs galore – especially when something goes slightly wrong, as it inevitably must – and there is a clear zest and enjoyment for being on stage. These people are having the time of their lives, and the enthusiasm is infectious.
During the interval, we are treated to some truly terrible Elizabethan pop covers, and in the second half, the momentum drops slightly as the cast try not to seem like they’re trying to pull all the disparate characters and plot points together.
These, though, are very minor quibbles. This is a truly delightful show, which authentically captures the energy and beauty of the Shakespearean experience while pulling it and poking it to its very limit.
Reviewed on 20th May
The Reviews Hub Score
A truly delightful show
