LIKE, SHAKESPEARE?
Meteor Theatre, 1 Victoria Street, Hamilton
03/08/2017 - 05/08/2017
Production Details
Would marriage counselling help the Macbeths? Can an indecisive Hamlet decide on a restaurant? How would Iago do in daytime talk show ratings? These are some of the important questions explored in Like, Shakespeare?, the latest show from Apocalypse Lounge.
“The project started out with the group discussing scripts for short plays,” producer Ross MacLeod explains. “We discovered we had several ideas about contemporary takes on Shakespearean characters and expanded it from there.”
From the famous balcony scene of Romeo and Juliet transposed into text chat to various characters being injected into reality TV, Like, Shakespeare? pokes fun at the modern world through a classical lens.
LIKE, SHAKESPEARE?
The Meteor theatre, Hamilton
August 3-5 at 7.30pm
with a 2pm Matinee on the 5th.
Bookings via themeteor.co.nz
CAST
Abigail Simpson
Alice Kapoor
Genevieve Shefield
Hannah Grant
Jonathan Wilce
Ross MacLeod
Tim Kapoor
with
Benny Marama
Ellen Barnard
Tim von Ahsen
Music by Matt Bentley
Theatre , Sketch ,
Very silly and funny
Review by Cate Prestidge 04th Aug 2017
The prologue sets the scene, as per, with Ross MacLeod delivering a rapid fire mashup of all the best lines from all the best plays. Rather nerdily, I try to mentally assign them as he goes, and fail. What follows is a series of comedic vignettes performed well by the ensemble cast: Abigail Simpson, Alice Kapoor, Courtney Neilsen, Genevieve Sheffield, Hannah Grant, Jonathan Wilce, MacLeod and Tim Kapoor. The action is supported by projected visuals as well as short film segments, and music from Matt Bentley.
As you’d expect, it’s all Shakespeare and they take existing characters and scenes from well-known works and place them in a new context, or into an existing context in a new way, or in a new way in a new context… you get the idea. Nothing is sacred.
Apocalypse Lounge describe it as “a pop-culture car-crash between classical theatre and the Information Age”. They’re not wrong. It’s a witty mix of wordplay and performance, with references to classic comedy, TV crime drama, talk shows, millennial angst, tinder, social awkwardness and dining fads.
I enjoy little touches like Lady Macbeth explaining Macbeth’s social shortcomings to him as she squirts on hand sanitizer, the extended text interplay between Romeo and Juliet (a nice nod to the ‘OMG Shakespeare’ series of books), the onesie clad Merry Wives of Tinder, and the ‘chav’ clans Montague and Capulet.
There are moments of Pythonesque nonsense and possibly the most awkward rap you’ll see in a while, but despite a few inconsistencies with the cast, it is enormous fun with some laugh out loud moments from the audience. I would have liked more music and think it would benefit from a jaunty Medieval interlude to avoid the silence of an empty stage in between scenes.
You’ll get the most out of it if you know your plays and I’d love to see this show in a cabaret format, with drinks and a bit of a rowdy crowd, and the actors in amongst it. What would Rosaline and Orlando’s awkward date, or Hamlet’s restaurant dilemma, be like in this setting?
It is very silly and funny, the cast are having a great time and at just over an hour, it’s a nice night out in the newly refurbished Meteor.
Srsly imho U shd go.
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