Writer-director Michael Harry takes on two of the greatest British storytellers, one classic and one more recent, to create homages that throws their characters into the deep end and drown them in a sea of knowing references and silly costumes. At the Courtyard Theatre.
Silly slapstick, knowing glances and audience interaction make the perfect recipe for light evening entertainment, and these two comedy shows have their random setting cranked up to very high. Unfortunately, bad wigs alone don’t make a good screwball comedy. Having toured the productions for months and months, the English Theatre Company now offer A Bitch of a Hitch and Waiting on Shakespeare on alternating days in this Hoxton venue.
In the Hitchcock piece, a young history teacher gets tangled up in all kinds of dodgy business by following a husky femme fatale (Amy Berry) into a club. What follows is a lengthy string of Hitchcock references (Birds: check, MacGuffin: check, Psycho shower: check) and people running off-stage to change their wig or costume.
The jokes are hit and miss, but in general the problem with the production is certainly not the irreverence of the material, but a fundamental disconnection to the subtleties of the referenced material. You just don’t see the master of suspense ever trying this hard. The performers cannot be blamed, they are throwing themselves into the flimsy material trying to rescue whatever there is, especially Nick Potts, who gives a very physical performance as the teacher who faces villains and shoot-outs. Joshua Stuart Mills plays more characters than fit on an average sized notepad and has impeccable comedic timing.
It’s strange because the ingredients for a funny show are basically there, but it just doesn’t come together as well as it needs to. Ultimately, there is enough material for an entertaining 25 minute show, but stretched out to well over 80 minutes it just gets a bit tedious: an evening with The 39 Steps is certainly to be favoured over this production.
Directed by Christopher Jeffries, the following Shakespearean twist on Waiting for Godot feels more fluid, and there is a great deal more to like about it. A time-travelling thief wakes up in the Globe to mess around with the rehearsals of famous Chamberlain’s Men Will Kempe and Richard Burbage. The two squabble about what show to put on for the Queen and their boss, Shakespeare himself, still hasn’t showed up. As setups go this is again fairly random: why a thief from our time? No one in Waiting on Shakespeare knows, and it’s just not wacky enough not to question its coherence. There is more squabbling and heaps and heaps of references, and a lengthy Hamlet re-enaction with the audience playing key characters.
All of this on its own is mildly amusing, but due to a lack of coherent frame it just seems to be leading nowhere. This kind of show is Reduced Shakespeare Company territory, and they have a much more secure grasp on style and tone to create humour out of a richness of textual references. Clocking in at around 85 minutes the show, has the same flaw as A Bit of A Hitch.
The result is never as suspenseful as Hitchcock or as poignant and funny as Shakespeare which, considering the potential, is a right shame.