S**t-faced Shakespeare comes back for more

S**t-faced Shakespeare, a travelling theatre company, is returning to London, performing the playwright’s classics with a twist – one cast member is always drunk.

S**t-faced Shakespeare is due to perform Much Ado About Nothing at the Leicester Square Theatre in London next month, following a successful sell-out stint last year with A Midsummer Night’s Dream. The company has also performed at Brighton and Edinburgh fringe festivals as well as spin-off shows in the US.

Speaking to The Evening Standard, cast member Stacey Norris admitted that “we never thought it would work.”

“And to be honest it didn’t the first time,” she added. “The person who was chosen to get inebriated wandered around taking random drinks from the audience. St John Ambulance had to be called. She was fine, but we thought we needed to refine things.”

Since then, S**t-faced Shakespeare has agreed on a format, stressing that at any point during proceedings, the chosen cast member “can say no.”

Four hours before the performance, the actors have a dinner party and the selected actor begins to drink. A drinks trolley is always on hand during the show lest the actor becomes ‘too sober.’ The company, however, does stress that safety remains its utmost concern and ensures that the same actor never does two nights less than eight days apart.

S**t-faced Shakespeare is now joined by sister company S**t-faced Showtime, adopting the same approach but with musicals instead.

Excessive drinking at the theatre is of course nothing new. In Elizabethan times, playhouses were frequently associated with drunkenness and disorder, particularly among the ‘pit audiences.’ On their website, S**t-faced Shakespeare pay homage to this element of theatre’s history and aim “to introduce a new generation of theatre-goers to the works of the Bard by reviving the raucous, interactive and vibrant nature of Elizabethan theatre with a very modern twist.”