Shakespeare On Trial
presented by Off The Leash Creative

Writer Bill Shakespeare encounters four of his own most famous characters: MacBeth, Iago, Hamlet and Juliet up-close, personal and ticked-off. Shakespeare On Trial explores the Bard’s accessibility and relevance in the world today.

 

Shakespeare has to defend his own writing as the four fictional characters challenge the author to write in a modern way, arguing that no-one understands them anymore.

 

Shakespeare On Trial is an 85 minute, fast-paced comedy, featuring a ‘greatest hits’ of famous Shakespeare quotes, speeches and the occasional soliloquy as the Bard has to prove his point: “The play’s the thing…”

Shakespeare on Trial gets a lot of laughs at its audience’s expense, batting us back and forth between drama (“to be or not to be” is performed in full, beautifully) and farce (Ophelia has a beard). You won’t mind the theatrical whiplash: it’s all in the service of taking the Immortal Bard down a peg (and maybe, possibly, raising him back up).

 

And although it would have been easy to turn this show into an exercise in finger-shaking, Webb’s script never patronizes its audience—well, never unintentionally.

 

Shakespeare on Trial is irreverent, exuberant, childish and scholarly. You’re likely to leave knowing you saw something astounding but not knowing what it was, exactly.