The endlessly entertaining ShakeItUp bring their Improvised Shakespeare Show to The Other Palace ahead of an Edinburgh run
“Methinks my trousers are too tight”
ShakeItUp – The Improvised Shakespeare Show begins with an amusing and accurate of Shakespearean tropes. In comedies, people marry; in tragedies, people die; and in histories, people – usually called Richard or John – marry and then die. It’s in our hands as the audience to vote for which genre we want, we also get to suggest names of protagonists and locations, which is how we arrived at the premiere (and final performance!) of The Comedy of Arturo of Marrakech.
ShakeItUp are a dab hand at this long-form Shakespearean improv (I enjoyed them at the Turbine last year) and this week-long run at The Other Palace will be followed by a full month in Edinburgh. A cast of 5 (plus two talented, be-stockinged musicians) are drawn from their company of 14 and from the bare bones of the suggested title, improvise their way through all sorts of madcap antics. In this instance, I think we ended up with more of a problem play than a true comedy – things got very dark in Gibraltar! – but we did end up at a romp of a finale with multiple weddings in the Moroccan desert.
The real joy of improv is being right there in the moment, so I could talk about invading Canadians, the lettuce of integrity, whether you can forswear someone who has already forsworn you, even big fat poos…but its the energy of the unexpected, and the cast’s responses, that make it fly. An additional innovation here is the audience having provided random lines of dialogue before the show begins, which are pulled from breeches at regular intervals to further up the jeopardy ante (if contributing, do remember do use your best handwriting though…).
They even double your money here, with a second act featuring the audience’s favourite character from the first half. So we also got to experience The Tragedy of Margaret of Brixton which I think was the stronger of the two as it fully embraced absurd in its tale of war along the Victoria Line with two surviving Seven Sisters as witches, King David Bowie failing to defend his kingdom from nefarious right-hand-man Colin and the grieving Margaret – ripped from the ménage à trois with which she ended the first play – aiming to take over the whole TFL. Highly inventive and endlessly entertaining.
