This was one of my first covid cancellations when its run was curtailed after five or six weeks in March 2020, and the last for me to catch up with some 2.5 years later. Not a stage adaptation of Ben Elton’s hit TV comedy series, but a new play based on the same premise and characters, well some of them.
Shakespeare is struggling to find inspiration for a new play. It needs to be a hit after the lukewarm reception given to Measure for Measure and All’s Well That Ends Well. Ideas come from his London landlady’s daughter Kate, firstly King Lear, then Othello. There’s a sprinkling of references to other plays, like Romeo & Juliet, Twelfth Night and A Winter’s Tale. The humour is in the juxtaposition of the period and contemporary issues like colour blind casting, gender representation and transport woes. so up-to-date I felt there might have been very recent additions. I thought it was a bit slow to take off but when it got going the laughs came quick and fast in a plot where life and plays converge. It’s humour is broad and bawdy, with it’s own charming euphemisms for private parts and sexual acts. I thought it was clever and a lot of fun.
Sean Foley’s speedy staging contains some lovely performances, chief amongst them Gemma Whelan as Shakespeare’s muse Kate, Rob Rouse as his servant bottom and Stewart Wright as larger-than-life 17th Century luvvie Burbage. It appears to be David Mitchel’s professional debut in a play, though he created the character and brings him alive on stage as he did on TV. The economics of live theatre is presumably the reason for fewer characters than on screen and I felt it missed them, most importantly Mrs Shakespeare, brilliantly characterised by Lisa Tarbuck on the small screen.
Good fun.
Gareth's Culture and Travel Blog 
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