For over a decade, Drunk Shakespeare has created alcohol-soaked renditions of the Bard. The gimmick goes like this: One actor begins by drinking three shots of straight liquor (Chaffee chose raspberry vodka). As a choppy production of “Macbeth” ensues, four other performers try, and increasingly fail, to keep the script on track. Eventually, the performer drinks another shot and, toward the end, the witches’ brew, which changes every night. In reality, Chaffee says, the show is about 50 percent scripted. The other half is improvised, with plenty of opportunities built in for the actors to fall off script.
“I do try to keep my Shakespeare as good as I can for as long as I can,” she says. “But the liquor’s gonna do what the liquor’s gonna do.”
Here in Washington and in four other cities across the country, Drunk Shakespeare has become something of an underground phenomenon, attracting new types of crowds that may never set foot inside the Kennedy Center. It’s advertised on social media, but much of its longevity comes via word of mouth. With such a small audience, the performance feels intimate — and despite the booze-fueled raunch and improvised mayhem, the actors know how to make Shakespeare sing.
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Drunk Shakespeare is a break from how most Shakespearean tragedies are experienced today, with no talking and cellphones off and everyone dressed up for the occasion to claim their $800 seat to see Denzel Washington on Broadway. But in some ways, it’s a return to the Bard’s roots.
In early modern London, when sewage flowed freely through the streets and the Thames, you’d be hard-pressed to find a sober Globe Theatre guest.
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More follows on drunkenness in Elizabethan theaters. Blech.
Has anyone been to one of these performances? Do you have the slightest interest?
Having lived with an alcoholic (and having gone through a heavy-drinking period of my own) I do not find drunkenness amusing. I never liked stereotypical drunk characters (like Otis on the Andy Griffith Show) who were meant to be pathetic and funny. I can’t even watch the old Thin Man movies because everyone always has a drink in their hand.
I haven’t heard of Drunk Shakespeare, but I tried watching an episode of Drunk History and I thought it was pretty stupid. I don’t find deliberately inebriated rambling to be inherently hilarious.
On a family trip to NYC some years back I didn’t go to drunk Shakespeare, but my father and sister both reported that it was a lot of fun.
I like the idea of Shakespeare for the masses, and the intimacy of the venue and visceral nature of performance no doubt make for a very entertaining way to connect with works that a) are difficult to connect with unless you’re already well versed and b) were meant to be very accessible.
I wouldn’t pay to hear slurred lines, but I am all for theater trying to be less stuffy. The language is already a challenge so there is no need to dress up or put on any kind of airs for what was MADE for the lower classes to enjoy while wasted.
I’m all for it. I feel very strong that the Bard deserves his reputation. Macbeth is my favorite of his plays. I can’t recall if it was this or a similar performance that was part of Philadelphia’s Fringe Festival last year. I do know it was Shakespeare performed inside a bar.
Yeah. Most people think Shakespeare is hard to understand because the language is outdated. No, it’s because a lot of the words were contemporary slang. As I have mentioned elsewhere, the line “Get thee to a nunnery!” has two meanings both of which audiences at the time would know. First, a nunnery is literally a place where nuns live. Second, “nunnery” was slang for a brothel. Every one of Shakespeare’s plays contains a dirty joke. Hotspur says in Henry V “My horse is my mistress!”. Two of the drunken gang or lowlifes that hang out with Falstaff are Doll Tearsheet and Mistress Quickly.
Shakespeare is inarguably great art. Macbeth deals with the weighty issue of free will versus predestination for example. He also usually included low comedy in lanuage that groundlins would have no trouble understanding. Also in Macbeth, a guard at the gate gets up for his shift, talks about how hard he partied last night and how great it was til he puked his guts out, and then pretends to be the guard at the gates of hell letting in celebrities of the time.
If this makes people feel that Shakespeare is fun, means that more people are exposed to his work and gets more people interested in his plays, I am wildly supportive of it
I had tried watching several episodes of Drunk History because of something that was going to be shown but, like @hogarth found the inebriated rambling annoying.
I wonder if these shows are more enjoyable if the viewer is also drunk. Being sober around drunk people is really unpleasant. So is being the only one drunk in a group of sober people.
My other gripe is that a perfectly factual and normal episode of Drunk History would be boring, so there is a huge incentive to exaggerate mistakes in a wacky way. And if some/most of the drunkenness is being faked, then why not just call it Inaccurate History and do away with the drinking aspect altogether?
Maybe someone should try a Shakespearean ripoff of Point Break LIVE!
Which Shakespeare character would play best conforming to the requirement that, “Essentially, in every scene, you have to look like you’ve just been dropped into a room and you have no idea what’s going on.”
I’ve been to Drunk Shakespeare (in Phoenix). It was fun. In no way was it an attempt to put on a Shakespearean play. It was more like an improv show with Shakespeare as the theme. The play was Hamlet when I went, apparently the company cycles through plays on a nightly basis.
Yes one of the actors takes three shots of booze at the start. That does not make them slurring drunk. That actor tries to play his part straight, the other actors try to make him break. There are multiple set pieces throughout, with audience participation. There was a two drink minimum, the drinks they served had Shakespearean themes and were actually quite good and reasonably priced.
There is no real stage, just two rows of seats surrounding a dance floor type area where most of the action takes place. One end is sort of a stage, but was occupied by a couple who won a charity bidding war to be Claudius and Gertrude (who did not act other than to die at the appropriate point in the play).
The show’s cocreator/interviewer Derek Waters has said that they purposefully didn’t use the takes where the drunk person was trying to be on. I’ve seen most episodes and I’ve seen a lot of real life drunks and I tend to believe him.
I must’ve seen the same article, because last night my wife and I watched a few of the videos on YouTube. It didn’t much appeal, and part of the joke seemed to be mixing Shakespearean dialogue with modern references and cursing.
I’m not shading that some people would like that, it just didn’t seem (based on a few videos) our thing.
Yep. I’ve never enjoyed alcohol and I don’t mind at all being around people having a drink or two or however many they can personally handle. I hate being around drunks and I am very often in that situation because I go to a lot of live music.
I very much appreciate Shakespeare but I’m not much of an Improv fan and the drinking aspect make this a no go for me.