Peter Viney's Blog

A Midsummer Night’s Dream
by William Shakespeare

Bound & Gagged Comedy present:

Sh!t Faced Shakespeare
by Magnificent Bastard Productions

Tivoli Theatre, Wimborne, Dorset
24th October 2019, 19.30

CAST

The programme is free. It’s two sides of folded A4 with very small print indeed, and I would estimate that it contains more words than many a £4 theatre programme. It would easily lay out to normal programme length. A missed opportunity? The cast is listed as eight, but each has two potential roles listed, and only six of them appear on any one show … something that ballet troupes do because of the frequency of minor injuries! Tonight’s cast:

Rob Smythson – compere
Saul Marron – Demetrius
Louise Lee – Helena
Richard Hughes – Lysander
Beth-Louise Priestley- Hermia
Jessica Brindle- Puck

I can’t see this line up in any of the online images.

From their website:

Shit-faced Shakespeare® is the hilarious combination of an entirely serious adaptation of a Shakespearean classic, with an entirely shit-faced cast member. With one cast member selected at random and given four hours to drink before every show we present to you classical theatre as it was always meant to be seen. With a gin in one hand, a cup of wine in the other and a flagon of ale in the other… What could possibly go wrong? Shit-faced Shakespeare®: A Midsummer Night’s Dream is playing all over the UK this winter. If you can’t make this date check out the other options on our UK homepage.

As this is my fifth A Midsummer Night’s Dream this year, I’m up for something completely different. This version is reduced to just the lovers and Puck … no Rude Mechanicals, nor Titania and Oberon. A thought … I once saw a reduced version with ONLY the Rude Mechanicals. That wouldn’t work, because already you’re playing about. This has to fit in with the long British tradition of finding someone trying to do a serious play or poem badly in silly costume hilarious. It dates back at least to Shakespeare in this very play with Pyramus & Thisbe. In modern terms, the first to come to mind is Morecambe & Wise’s frequent attempts to do Anthony & Cleopatra or Julius Caesar. Then there’s Benny Hill and Kenneth Williams doing the serious folk singer. It goes on and on, Terence Rattigan’s Harlequinade (LINKED) is probably the best of the lot at taking the piss out of Shakespearean production, but then there’s Carry On Cleo, The Reduced Shakespeare Company’s The Complete Works, Noises Off, The Play That Went Wrong. Sticking with Shakespeare, Filter from the Lyric Hammersmith did wildly sent up versions of both Twelfth Night and A Midsummer Night’s Dream.

The Tivoli Theatre was virtually full. Balcony too. I have seen other theatre plays here, including the Bristol Old Vic graduation class doing A Midsummer Night’s Dream. I’ve never seen it this full since the singalong film of Mamma Mia. The audience profile was similar … a majority of women, many in groups of friends. It’s clear that Sh!t Faced Shakespeare have a loyal and enthusiastic following. They have been going since 2010, and Louise Lee dates back that far. This production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream appears to date from 2016.

The concept rings bells. An actor who worked in Stratford in the 1950s regaled me with tales of Richard Burton, who liked a liquid lunch of beer before a matinee. They were doing history plays and he told me that Burton regularly urinated in his armour while declaiming the great speeches. He said the smell would hit you, then you had to avoid slipping on the puddle.

At a vastly more modest level, in our weekly shows for ELT students in the 1970s, one or three of the cast were often well-lubricated, though they could normally hold it. I still wake up at memories of The Fire Raisers when one fire raiser had been left alone and motionless in Act One in the attic with a litre of sherry, concealed by just a curtain. By the time he came to join the action he had finished the sherry (he’d had more before the show) and in spite of a short sleep (we had to wake him), had little concept of what the play was, let alone his role in it. As the other fire raiser, I had to steer him around the stage doing the lines for both of us. Whether lampooning it is good taste is another question. That sherry drinker became a serious alcoholic (if he wasn’t already). While he fought it, and had ten years completely sober later, he still died in his 40s of a sudden heart attack. But I take the story that someone at random in this production actually drank for hours before with an extremely large skip load of salt.

I’m conscious that even attempting to review something like this sets the reviewer up as a po-faced (rather than sh!t faced) critic. I’ll persist. First, I don’t believe the alcohol “conceit” for a moment. I don’t believe they rotate the actor who’s pissed. All the reviews I found name Saul Marron either as Lysander or as Demetrius. I don’t believe that the plot development “just happened” as a result. What I do know is that appearing to be improvising/ making it up as you go along on stage is a high level dramatic skill. I also believe that you need just as much acting skill to do a farce or a Carry On  film as serious drama.

The set: before the play of course

They had Shakesperean-era costume, incredibly rare nowadays.  Better, they made that subliminal link to following the ‘who loves who’ plot by putting Demetrius and Helena in blue, and Lysander and Hermia in green. Colour coding has been done several times, but it’s a good idea. The travelling set, given the excellent lighting plot, was simple but better than most travelling productions.

It was rude and raucous. There was an awful lot of supposedly inadvertent face to groin contact. I don’t think any of the ruder business was invented by this production  … for example, when Helena  says:

And even for that do I love you the more
I am your spaniel, and Demetrius
The more you beat me, I will fawn on you
Use me but as your spaniel, spurn me, strike me …

She gets down on fours, bottom in the air pointing towards Demetrius, who contemplates a touch of doggy-fashion, then thinks about a bit of sado-masochism. Fine, but I have seen it at least twice in “straight” productions. On line images show her bending over rather than on all fours, so maybe it does vary! We also both thought she switched “spaniel” to “dog” maybe thinking spaniel a tad esoteric.

I was increasingly critical. The compere at the beginning is great, but why does he have to shout over a clattering soundtrack? Audience participation involves handing out a gong and bugle to request more alcohol for the pissed actor if they thought he was sobering up, plus a bucket to mop up vomit. The compere is an important role. Later Puck brings up an audience member to be Bottom very briefly. I wondered how well you need to know the plot to know who Bottom was?

Then let’s take the “fuck” count. In the 2019 Bridge Theatre production, Hermia says  “fuck” just the once and it had the audience rolling in the aisles. Drop it in four or five times and it can be funny, especially if the actor keeps apologizing for saying it which I would have done, but they didn’t. But if you say “fucking” forty or fifty times it just becomes a blur with no impact. When they did attempt the original lines in the play they gabbled them.

The main thing that distorts the original plot is that Demetrius, being drunk, realizes he fancies Lysander. OK, Emma Rice’s 2016 Globe production had Lysander and Demetrius getting it on. In The Bridge 2019 version we have Oberon and Bottom in gay embrace, plus as Puck plays mischief, first Lysander and Demetrius snog, then Helena and Hermia. You could say that Sh!t Faced Shakespeare were doing this in 2016, so not derivative of these recent major versions.

The limp-wristed laugh is a tradition on the stage too. Noel Coward, Kenneth Williams, Frankie Howard are among a long list of practitioners, and you’ll rarely see an 18th century play that doesn’t go for it, and I’ve seen many, many Shakespearean productions where a character will flit about for a laugh. French dauphins are a popular choice.  In any A Midsummer Night’s Dream it’s near inevitable that there’ll be some reference in Pyramus & Thisbe – why do you think the one assigned to play Thisbe is called Flute?  (A flute player was a 16th century euphemism). There’s another side though … let’s call it the Dick Emery side (Ooh, you are awful! But I like you!) where a man mincing on with a pink scarf, handbag and a high-pitched voice is supposed to be funny without adding any lines.

The Dick Emery side descends from the “Smoker.” This was a military entertainment where skits were performed. It was a smoker because the audience could drink and smoke. A drag act was inevitable, and it went on to rugby clubs’ socials. When I was at university I was in a modern self-catering hall, but on the same site was a traditional hall:  fully catered, academic gowns for dinner, no female guests after 10 p.m. They did “Smokers” every term and as a friend was there, I saw a few. They dated from an earlier era where it had been a temporary RAF base, and then after that most of the students had already done National Service. So a tradition was set and persisted. Apart from a beer drinking contest, and a bit of on stage fart lighting, there would always be a couple of burly blokes with beards pretending to be gay. Ha ha.

The lines from the pissed Demetrius were a far cruder version of Dick Emery. “You’ve got a lovely brown arse” to Lysander, who I hasten to add was a white actor, so it did not refer to his shapely buttocks but was cruder and he’d just been mock-humping him. Say it once get a laugh, so repeat it several times. He called Helena a ‘cockblocker’ a couple of times because she tried to stop him mounting Lysander. (Huge, huge laughs at that one from the audience). He said “I want to be inside you” to Lysander repeatedly. And repeatedly. And again. Hey, we got that fucking “joke” the first three times. I insert “fucking” because it was in so many sentences by then.

Lots of groin to face stuff. The women in the audience were in hysterics. The Chipperfields at a hen party came into my mind. So I applied my racism on stage or film test. That is “How would I feel if I were sitting next to an Afro-Carribbean friend watching this?” or here “How would I feel if I were sitting next to a gay friend watching this?” My answer? Deeply embarrassed.

Sorry, I appreciate the effort, vigour, and I did find myself laughing at some of it, and many touring productions would envy the audience size and response, but the thing is, I’ve found nearly every normal version of the Lovers story in this play much funnier than this send up.

Interestingly, Sh!t Faced Shakespeare seem to inhabt a different theatrical universe. 24 hours after posting this, readers of the review are at less than 10% of the normal level.

BUT SERIOUSLY … OTHER REVIEWS OF A MIDSUMMER NIGHT’S DREAM ON THIS BLOG:

• A Midsummer Night’s Dream – RSC 2011
• A Midsummer Night’s Dream – Headlong 2011
• A Midsummer Night’s Dream – Filter 2011
• A Midsummer Night’s Dream – Selladoor 2013
• A Midsummer Nights Dream – Handspring 2013, Bristol
• A Midsummer Night’s Dream – Grandage 2013
• A Midsummer Night’s Dream – Globe 2013
• A Midsummer Night’s Dream – Propellor 2013
• A Midsummer Night’s Dream RSC 2016, ‘A Play for the Nation’ at Stratford (February)
• A Midsummer Night’s Dream RSC 2016 Revisited Stratford, (July)
• A Midsummer Night’s Dream – Globe 2016
• A Midsummer Night’s Dream – BBC TV SCREEN version 2016
• A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Bristol Old Vic Theatre School, 2016
• A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Bath, 2016
• A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Young Vic 2017
• A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Watermill 2018
• A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Bridge Theatre 2019
• A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Globe 2019
• A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Watermill on Tour, Poole 2019