‘Two beers or not two beers?’ Thankfully, this question is answered in a robust and definitive fashion at Sh!tfaced Shakespeare’s hilarious 15th anniversary production of Hamlet.
The concept is simple. A company of six classically trained actors perform an abridged adaptation of a Shakespeare play, in this case Hamlet. One of the actors, however, has spent the previous four hours drinking. The remaining characters accommodate their drunk colleague’s erratic behaviour and get through the play as best they can.
With one actor drunk, and the rest semi-improvising around them, the production is kept vaguely on track by compère/producer James Murfitt with one hand on ‘the horn of last resort’ which freezes the action and allows him to interject, often quite forcibly. Tonight he comes on to ask the cast to put their hands up if they’re supposed to be on the stage during a certain scene. At another point he intervenes to remind the company that there’s only five minutes left before the interval. With one eye on the audience’s reactions, he frequently puts an end to extended comedy digressions.
In many ways, this production of Hamlet is a little like a stage version of Just A Minute where Nicholas Parsons is trying to stop Paul Merton and Gyles Brandreth from screaming ‘Garlic bread!’ at each other for two hours. Hamlet himself was tonight’s drunk actor, unsteadily played by Jamie Sandersfield and often sipping from cans of Jubel peach-infused lager supplied by the compère whenever he seemed like he might be sobering up. One ‘lucky’ member of the audience is even supplied with a bucket, in case of… emergencies. Thankfully, the bucket is not required during tonight’s show.
The show is nominally directed by Stacey Norris, and the first and second acts both open with a stylised bit of movement from choreographer Beth-Louise Priestley, before chaos is unleashed. If Priestley is somewhere backstage in dismay at what happens to her choreography when one of the actors is drunk, that must pale next to Robbie Capaldi as the fight choreographer, when Hamlet’s famous climactic duel scene sees the compère hastily swap out the prop rapiers for rubber toys, as the eponymous Prince of Denmark alternates between shouting, ‘Falcon punch!’ and mumbling, ‘Ooh, I’m gonna get you.’
We occasionally get to see glimmers of what the show might be like performed sober, when Hamlet isn’t on stage. In Act 2, when Laertes confronts Claudius over the death of his father Polonius (played gamely by a member of the audience who wonderfully turns out to know Polonius’s lines), and Ophelia’s mad scene, we enjoyed a good five minutes of abridged but powerfully acted Shakespeare – before Hamlet wanders on early, swigging from a can of Jubel, to inform us that Ophelia’s fallen into ‘the coast’ and that he ‘couldn’t save her’. At this point, Hamlet had been off the stage for so long that we couldn’t help wondering whether he’d been busy talking to God on Elsinore’s big white telephone.
On these rare occasions where the cast actually get to do some Shakespeare, the performances from Aaron Phinehas Peters (a suitably uptight Laertes but an incredibly fun Ghost), Shady Murphy (visibly having a riot as Gertrude), John Mitton (although upstaged by his alarming codpiece, Claudius has never been more of a panto villain, and the audience loved it), and Princess Donnough (a strong Ophelia, who also spends most of her time as Horatia literally propping up Hamlet) underline their training, as they shift gears away from humouring and acting around (or in spite of) Sandersfield, and into high drama. But due to the colourful costumes from Lorna Jean Costumes, and the distinctly pantomime backdrop from Nicola Jones, even the dramatic sequences are infused with a heavy dose of enjoyable campery.
Sh!tfaced Shakespeare’s Hamlet delivers exactly what it promises. It’s clearly a single joke, but one which keeps the audience howling with laughter for two hours. Whenever the joke does start to wear thin, Murfitt pops in to keep things on track. Whether the Prince of Denmark is attempting to juggle three of Yorick’s skulls (and a can of Jubel), or encouraging the audience to join in on the ‘To be or not to be’ soliloquy, the show keeps moving at a bewildering pace, sweeping the audience along for an unforgettable and unique evening’s entertainment.
Sh!tfaced Shakespeare’s Hamlet is playing at The Leicester Square Theatre until 21 September 2025, then touring 1st October to 15 November 2025.
Book your tickets at shitfacedshows.com
Words by Andrew Lawston
Photos by ANR PR
