A legendary Fringe institution, Sh-exclaimation point-t-hyphen-faced Shakespeare Registered Trademark is a show that, after fifteen years of success, hardly needs any introduction.

Like all the best shows, the pitch is simple – it’s a normal production of a Shakespeare play except that one of the players (on rotation each night) is completely plastered, off-script and out of control. The rest of the cast have to do their best to keep the show on the rails as it inevitably starts collapsing around their ears. This year’s production is the bard’s comedy of elves and errors, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, giving the drunken chaos a toybox of lovesick ladies, mischievous sprites and donkey-headed fools to play with.

Having not seen the show before, I wasn’t entirely sure how the premise could possibly be effectively funny on a nightly basis. Anyone who’s actually attended – or, heaven forbid, directed – a performance when one of the cast shows up insensibly inebriated can tell you that what follows isn’t a night full of hilarious nonsense but just a bad show full of dropped lines and backstage vomiting. And Sh!t-faced Shakespeare®’s secret is obvious, if somewhat disappointing. The pink elephant in the room is that the person on stage may well be drunk, but they’re not that drunk. They play up how drunk they are, messing around on stage, interrupting, going off on strange tangents, while the other players all indulge them and play along with whatever nonsense they come up with. It’s more an improv show than a serious attempt to put on the play in question, but with the bonus that there’s a really robust framework of lines and scenes the improv can happen around.

And the results are, thankfully, hilarious. There’s something so wonderfully amusing about the juxtaposition of the verbose precision of Shakespearean dialogue being interrupted by someone just saying whatever comes into their heads. And while whichever cast member is sozzled for the night is always the key player, the rest are no slouches, with more than their fair share of witty gags as they roll with the figurative punches to the script. The play itself has been neatly trimmed to give just the right amount of fodder to keep it coherent (or as coherent as the paralytic performer will allow) with some appropriately amusing interpretations of key moments. Fae court jester Puck, in particular, is a gift to the chaos, openly breaking the fourth wall and playing with the audience.

There is, it must be said, a feeling that the rough edges of what ostensibly should be an anarchic late-night underground show have been deftly sanded off with the years of success the show has experienced. From the somewhat unsightly registered trademark on all the branding, to the explanation of the company’s sustainability policy in the programmes (?!?) everything does feel a little clean in a “please enjoy responsibly” type of way but perhaps that’s inevitable when a show can tour internationally and reliably sell out the largest venue in the fringe.

Overall, the show is a solid, fun time. Perhaps it’s more squiffy than sloshed, but that just makes the laughs all the more reliable.

****

Reviewed by Tom

Underbelly – McEwan Hall

21.15 (1hr 15 mins)

Until 24 Aug