Shakespeare is about to get completely shaken up, with a crazy, hilarious and plain ridiculous show – 'The Popular Mechanicals'.
Described by Australian Stage as a “gut-busting laugh riot”, 'The Popular Mechanicals' brings the Rude Mechanicals made famous in Shakespeare's 'A Midsummer Night's Dream' to the forefront, running hand-in-hand with the audience through a chaotic and mischievous display of antics. A group of half-wits prepare to have their play performed at the royal marriage of the Duke and Duchess, but things go all kinds of wrong along the way.
'The Popular Mechanicals' was first brought to the stage by none other than the incomparable Geoffrey Rush in 1987. Written originally by Tony Taylor and Keith Robinson, it was a wildly different and more current take on theatrical humour.
This isn't the first time a new show has adopted the characters and loose plot lines from something in the past; 'Wicked' for example, took the witches from The Wizard Of Oz and told the story of how they came to be. Helpmann Award-winning actress Amber McMahon ('Girl Asleep') stars in the show. “I think it's a great concept,” Amber says. “They use the hook of a well-known narrative so you understand, and there's a lovely familiarity that comes with knowing the characters, so in a sense the audience already have a relationship with them.”
Shakespearean productions have been passed down countlessly over the years, with a number of different adaptations and remakes, but this show – although inundated with witty, modern humour – holds the classic nature of Shakespeare's work tight in its arms.
“You've got the integrity of the Shakespearean text and then you get the tittering around it,” she laughs. “That's what gives it that kind of modern feel, but even the newly added text is Shakespearean in feeling.”
Amber reassures that even if you aren't a Bard-buff, the story of the wacky, idiotic Mechanicals is one that is pretty simple to grasp. The play removes the fourth wall, so the audience gets a behind-the-scenes insight into what takes place backstage, and in rehearsal. “It's a very simple adaptation of 'A Midsummer Night's Dream', these Mechanicals have to put on a show but they're incapable of doing so because they are inept buffoons. And it's like 'how do they rehearse? How do they get along? How do they do it?'.”
Amber promises a night of “madness, ordered chaos, belly laughs and a lot of colour and movement.
“I'd love for the audience to feel exhausted from being on this madcap ride, and to have a sense of love for the theatre... I want them to go, 'you know what? Theatre is a fantastic medium, and this show was a great celebration of it'.”
'The Popular Mechanicals' performs Adelaide Festival Centre 6-28 November.
