Shit-Faced Shakespeare

We’ve all seen a few of Shakespeare’s plays over the years and sometimes the acting is so pompous and the performance so interminably long that you just want it to all end now.

Coming soon is the antidote to all of your Bard of Avon’s woes; the Shit-Faced Shakespeare version of Macbeth.

Now you can see an abridged version of this magnificent tragedy, where a few of the actors on stage might have had a drink or two, but one of them will be shit-faced.

That means slaughtered, fried, hammered or blotto, but the idea is that every night one of the classically trained Shakespearean actors draws the straw and drinks before the show so that they are off with the pixies by the time they hit the stage.

“We choose the drunk about a month in advance so you know when you are meant to be drinking,” Matt Seager, actor, Shit-Faced Shakespeare said.

This sounds like the perfect gig for some, but it is serious business for the company that has been running for fifteen-years and played to sell-out comedy festivals and shows around the world.

“It started at a festival called the Secret Garden Party and it went to the Edinburgh Fringe in 2012,” Seager said.

“I was in my second year of university and doing Edinburgh for the first time and all I knew was that everyone was talking about this Shakespeare play where some of the actors get drunk.”

The shows started out in small venues before quickly moving to larger spaces and eventually making its way to London’s West End.

Word of mouth soon had the company touring through Europe and the States and eventually it became a comedy festival favourite in Australia, with previous productions of A Midsummer’s Night Dream and Romeo and Juliet proving to be sell-outs.

For those naysayers who might take umbrage at such treatment of Shakespeare, the performances might not be too far from historical fact.

Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre was built in Southwark, an area outside of the jurisdiction of the City of London, and known for its bear baiting areas, taverns and brothels.

We can only imagine that both the audience and the actors for Shit-Faced Shakespeare are close to what the Bard may have been writing for and playing to.

For the new season of Macbeth in Sydney, it is caveat emptor — outrage, offence and disrespect is a given.

At one point an audience member may even be asked to participate in murdering one of Macduff’s children with a toy cross-bow.

“We are doing Macbeth at the moment and most people coming to watch will know that the king dies, and it might be that the drunk decides not to kill the king,” Seager said.

Since the company began it has consumed more than 9,000 beers on stage and flashed 51 nipples, 62 per cent of them male.For a raucous and pissed night out come and join an equally loaded cast and let it all hang out, but we urge you to do so responsibly.

In the 12 years of the shows there have been zero deaths and all cast livers are still original.

Until April 28

The Concourse, 409 Victoria Rd, Chatswood

May 8-19

Manning Bar, Sydney University, Manning House, Level 2 Manning Rd, Camperdown

www.shitfacedshows.com/macbeth