This time-pressured parody, in which ‘Titus Andronicus’ is served as a cookery show, the history plays are a rugby match and ‘Othello’ is a grin-inducing rap, has been knocking around for 24 years, nine spent in the West End.
There’s an expectation that each new cast will bring their own meta-theatrical booze to the party. Here James McNicholas, Owen Roberts and Lucy Wooliscroft are sharply shambolic and cutely competitive as the three drama grads desperate to impress.
Their most inspired addition is to have Roberts deliver Hamlet’s ‘To be or not to be’ speech to an empty table (replete with Champagne and Maltesers) which they have optimistically reserved for Kevin Spacey. Hamlet’s existential crisis is compounded into a failing luvvie’s tantrum on the futility of performing when confronted by the dwindling possibility of fame.
Not all opportunities for improvisation are made the most of. But the main issue here is one shared by every patchwork play about the Bard, from irreverent pastiches to Simon Callow’s ‘The Man from Stratford’. Whether molested or played impressively straight, fragments of text do gleam through like precious stones in granite: a reminder that you’d rather just be watching Shakespeare.