SHAKESPEARE Á LA CARTE (2008-2010, 2013)

A clever but simple idea.

Audiences are invited to a restaurant where they are promised that actors will entertain them with some Shakespeare. The Chef begins to cook, waiters set about serving the guests, a Shakespeare ‘Menu’ is shared and expectation begins to grow as they await the actors.

The wait goes on and the audience starts to fidget. Eventually, the Maitre D asks everyone for their attention and announces that the actors are still on their way from London. The audience groans.

‘Does anyone know any Shakespeare to keep us going?’ the Maitre D asks.

‘I do’, says one of the waiters… and the performance begins because these aren’t the chef or waiters, but Hydrocracker. 

SHAKESPEARE À LA CARTE takes both the familiar and the unfamiliar speeches of Shakespeare and plays them out with and amongst audiences sat in a restaurant enjoying coffee and croissants or an evening meal and wine. The audience become part of Henry V’s army, the players in A Midsummer Night’s Dream and secret onlookers as the lovers declare their vows in Romeo and Juliet.