There’s a jolly, fresh joie de vivre around the Brighton Open Air Theatre, as the Bank Holiday sunshine, forecast to be lost in cloud, has come out just for Impromptu Shakespeare. Start the show and it feels like a bite of Shakespeare’s Elizabethan theatre as it might have been; electric, new, on-the-fly, sans fourth wall, and down-to-the-ground mentally accessible to all. Most of all though, it’s very fun.
Impromptu Shakespeare is a long-form improvised theatrical piece, put together by five players who are clearly super-familiar with the many common themes, traits, and linguistic twists and turns of The Bard – allowing them to play fast and lose and fondly with them him, alongside invited audience input. There’s a sparkiness and large dollops of mischief that come from the sharp improvisation, the cast taking each other into playful creative avenues and down main roads of fresh juicy plot, supporting and teasing each other as the scenes unfold. It’s was great fun to see one improvisor volunteer another to sing a ballad “of 20 verses” and then sit down expectantly. And even more so when a call from the tyrannical king for “a child who would be killed here” is met by a front row volunteer and subsequent greatly applauded surprise cameo.
There is, of course, more to the 90 minute performance (with one interval) than stunt improvising. What unfolds is gripping, and in turns laugh-out loud, dramatic, romantic, and poetic. Unafraid of monologues that jump into exposition nicely, or left-turns that blossom into sub-plot from apparent storyline cul-de-sacs, the experience of the Impromptu Shakespeare company shines, breaking The Bard down and away from the elites and bringing him back to the masses. Just where he should be – hurrah!
Brighton Open Air Theatre, 25 May 2024, 2pm
