The most shocking line in Much Ado About Nothing is generally the one in which Beatrice, asked by Benedick what he can do to prove his love, replies: “Kill Claudio.” In the latest production, that instruction was trumped by a sexist term shouted at Beatrice by a female audience member, and Hero yelling the most severe sexual expletives. To be fair, both of them seemed the worse for wear.
The unique staging point of the Sh!t-faced Shakespeare company is that one of the six actors (selected on a roster that a programme note defends as medically responsible) loads up with alcohol before and during the show. We were told that Beth-Louise Priestley, playing Hero, had knocked back a bottle of prosecco and two large cans of strong lager in the dressing room, chased down by two more beers during the 70-minute show, although Bénédictine might have been more fitting. But, with two bars in the auditorium and one outside, many of the audience members seemed far ahead.
Anecdote has it that there were famous past Shakespeare productions in which the challenge for spectators was to spot the lead actor who wasn’t bladdered. But, on those occasions, the actors, though slipping and slurring, nobly tried to stick to the script. In this case, Priestley, giveaway giggly and tipsy from the start, is at once completely off her text, foul-mouthedly improvising and physically interfering with colleagues. If she was really that far gone, the show feels too cruel, but if she’s just acting drunk, it seems pointless.
This London run for Sh!t-faced Shakespeare continues the trend for professionally amateurish theatre that has made The Play That Goes Wrong a long-running West End hit, headed for Broadway. But, though staggering in the same vineyard, this is an inferior vintage. The sober truth, I fear, is that if you don’t watch pissed, you’ll leave pissed off.
- At Leicester Square theatre, London, until 16 September. Box office: 020-7734 2222.
