I’ve had a pleasantly busy beginning to the autumn. This weekend I happily worked with the company Rift again, doing a couple of nights guiding for ‘Shakespeare in Shoreditch’ (The Hoxton Path). I had a thoroughly enjoyable time, both guiding and seeing the shows; it’s fantastic seeing how others have been inspired by Shakespeare, especially in the streets he once trod. I found the shows inspiring in their turn – a play is already forming in my mind. The variety of the Hoxton path was one of its real strengths and it’s great seeing the different directions people took with Shakespeare as a starting point.  

‘Disnatured’ was possibly my favourite, although it’s hard to pick one when they’re all so different. It was particularly thought-provoking. Placing ‘King Lear’ in a grotty flat, bailiff at the door, really struck home. The regal title is in fact a minor part of Shakespeare’s play – property (whether it be land or £500 of junk), mental health (Male or female. Father or mother) and familial ties, can be placed effectively into any context and really embodied the concept of ‘Shakespeare in Shoreditch’. Beautifully written and performed as well. It was the show I really took home with me.

I loved seeing how the shows grew from perhaps a single line. ‘This Isle is Full of Noises’ had a mesmerising atmosphere, taking their chosen title and weaving a magical tapestry of everyday sounds into Caliban’s isle. It captured the sombre, haunting quality that underlies ‘The Tempest’, but also the unexpected beauty of an everyday environment. Although the audience followed Caliban, the film was careful to place us on neither side – of the lonely, voiceless creature or the invading Miranda teaching him to talk. It felt like a rare privilege to witness the origins of a relationship far gone sour by the beginning of Shakespeare’s play, and was by turns moving and loyal to the world of ‘The Tempest’.

‘The Best Pies in London’ was similarly loyal to Shakespeare and its boundless energy and wicked humour was a delight. Rocketing along at a breakneck speed, I was glad to see it twice to pick up all of its ‘Titus Andronicus’ connections – my favourite a reference to the silent ‘Lav’, so quiet it’s like she ‘doesn’t have a tongue in her head’. Like a well made pie, it was seasoned with choice one-liners, secret winks to those familiar with the play.

The rap battle at the heart of ‘Community Payback’ was more subtle in its connection (can I use subtle to describe a rap battle?) and my tour groups often picked up on the rhythmic ‘Romeo and Juliet’ chorus quality at the beginning, but had forgotten it by the end, plumping for comedies. I suppose it lacked the lethal edge of the Montagues and Capulets, I’m not sure the opposing sides should have come together at the end… but it was pretty infectious, and a joy in a fairly dark line up. I loved that one of the shows attempted to do verse – maybe rap is the modern iambic pentameter, and those violent youth gangs definitely would have asbos and be doing community service if they were kicking about today. And the best bit? The girl kicked ass – because Juliet is a far finer and stronger character than Romeo and release her from a chauvinistic society, and her father, and she’d go far today.

I wish ‘Three Lose Teeth’ had been slightly less obscure. It mirrored ‘Macbeth’, but even then (rules of three) quite obscurely, with some elements being completely contrary, such as Macbeth actually falling asleep at the end and Macbeth convincing Lady Macbeth, rather than vice versa. One element I really loved though – the tramp emerging from the piles of cardboard as if he’d grown out of the pavement reminded me of the witches as ‘bubbles of the earth’. It captured that sinister quality of the witches being a vicious part of the environment.

I’d love to see ‘Shakespeare in Shoreditch’ become an annual event – they’ve only grazed the surface in terms of all the shows that could be created and ideas born from Shakespeare. Guiding was a treat – yes, I love being on the stage and performing in someone else’s shoes – but, as a performer the audience is so often a vacuum; you bow and leave the stage and miss all those truthful first reactions. Everyone in my groups came out of each performance discussing what they’d seen, smiling and anticipating the mysteries of the next alleyway, park, garage, disused flat… As Ben Jonson wrote of Shakespeare, ‘He was not of an age but for all time’, beautifully illustrated over a few rainy weeks in Shoreditch.