Shakespeare à la Carte
Devised by Jonathan Cullen & Richard Hahlo.
Performed by Jonathan Cullen, Fiona Dunn & Richard Hahlo.
 
Next appearing at the Canterbury Festival, October 24-26 2011
 
First commissioned by the Brighton Festival
and performed at Pizza Express restaurant in Brighton May 2008.
 
 
“Shakespeare à la Carte was delicious... a clever gem of a production”
Miriam O’Reilly, Pick of the Week Radio 4
 
Shakespeare à la Carte from ArtsAgenda on Vimeo.
 


  
 
Watch the BBC News clip on the 2008 show here.
The show was recorded in 2009 for BBC Radio 4's Afternoon Play, and broadcast on Easter Monday. It was subsequently chosen for the station's Pick of the Week. It has since been repeated on Radio 4 in December 2010.

Produced by Hydrocracker and ArtsAgenda, the show has appeared at:

For more information or production booking, costs and timescales, please contact ArtsAgenda
by email info@artsagenda.co.uk or by phone on +44(0)1273 626519
 
ArtsAgenda
Fancy a Danish with Hamlet? Or a croissant with a Capulet?

Your waiter takes your order for coffee & pastries, and your pick of the Shakespeare menu. Some of the best bits and a few surprises are then served up at your table and all around the restaurant.

As Polonius might put it, we've got: ‘Tragedy, Comedy, History, Pastoral, Pastoral-Comical, Historical-Pastoral, Tragical-Historical, Tragical-Comical-Historical-Pastoral.’ All served with vittles, verse and a side order of iambic pentameter.
 Shakespeare a la Carte
   
Brighton Argus Review  
Tuesday 6th May 2008

Offering starters of histories, main courses of tragedies and desserts of comedies, with the option of a "sonnet of the day", the menus are slightly different at Pizza Express on Sunday mornings during the festival.

It certainly feels strange to weigh up your favourites between Hamlet and Macbeth in front of a waiter who is surely more used to listening to his customers' awkward attempts at asking for a Siciliana pizza.		  

Our waiter's response when he took our order - Richard III followed by Macbeth and A Midsummer Night's Dream - was appropriately enough: "Enjoy your Shakespeare!"

Taster-sized portions of The Great Bard's work are the dish of the day in this brilliantly conceived and imaginatively staged Argus Angel-winning theatrical event.
The cast, whose credits all include the Royal Shakespeare Company and the National Theatre, perform some of the best bits of the Bard as a perfect accompaniment to a Sunday morning hot coffee and pastries.

It is a treat both for the Shakespeare lover and the newcomer.

For the inexperienced, there is nothing to fear. The extensive menu includes selections from the plays that only someone who had spent the last 400 years in a cave could be unaware of.

The balcony scene from Romeo And Juliet, Macbeth's fears as he prepares to murder Duncan, Richard III's opening speech and Henry V's rousing speech on the battlefield of Agincourt are all present and correct, as of course is Hamlet's famous "To be or not to be" speech.

For the Shakespeare connoisseur, there are plenty of knowing references and groan-inducing bad jokes between the readings, as well as the chance to get involved in the sort of audience participation designed to heighten your enjoyment of the show rather than make you feel stupid.

 The up-close-and-personal edge to Shakespeare a la Carte is all the more welcoming compared with the distant open-air performances found at most festivals.

Duncan Hall