When I heard that I was to interview Producer and Actor Saul Marron of the award winning sell out fringe phenomenon Sh*t-faced Shakespeare; I immediately headed for my drinks cabinet, and having consumed a couple of pints of ciders, I bring you the Sh*t faced interview of Sh*t faced Shakespeare!
Already pre-warned that I had had a few, Saul opened up to what we were to expect when A Midsummer Night’s Dream comes to The Wyvern tomorrow.
What are we to expect from Sh*tfaced Shakespeare?
We have an hour and 20 minutes to get the story of Midsummer Nights Dream across and to include a drunk, so we have stripped it down to the 4 lovers and Puck. Puck will guide us along the way, with lots of choreographed fights that go horribly wrong because one of us is always drunk!
How drunk is drunk?
Pretty drunk to be honest, it depends on who the drunk is. Everyone has their own alcohol that they drink. I tend to go for Corona’s followed by a few cheeky G&T’s, Beth-Louise Priestly loves Prosecco and Budweiser but we tend to get to a “good night out” level of drinking, we start 4 hours before we go on stage. It is safety done, so we have all the cast around the drinking actor, to make sure they are having a lovely time. It’s usually a nice level of drunk, I normally get through about half a bottle of gin myself and it just depends on the size and weight of the actor but it’s usually “yep! They’re pretty drunk!”
Who’s the most outrageous drunk out of all the cast?
The most chaotic drunk is Beth-Louise Priestley she is a minx basically. We were in Portsmouth recently and she kept running off the stage, up into the second level – running away from the Compere who is there to ensure they are relatively in control.
Well that’s quite handy! (Drunk me was very keen to interject here!)
We try to get to the end of the show at least – drag them back and say “remember you’re doing a play right now”.
We have Louise Lee who, every time she gets drunk, she decides she wants to speak in, well, it’s not even a real Language, kind of Italian sounding a little bit Welsh and lots of witchcraft stuff as well – we don’t know why!
I get kind of laid back, like a lounge singer and sing a lot of Chaka Khan, I don’t know why either.
I found this comedy gold and having finally stopped laughing, I rambled about Barry Manilow, poor Saul, it went on for some time …
Is there just four sober and one drunk on stage and in the cast?
5 actors in total, 4 lovers and Puck and a compare as well. I am double rolled, so I play Lysander and Demetrius but we also have Richard Hughes who plays Lysander and Puck is played by Jessica Brindley and she also plays Hermia on another night, so there is always two people playing one role. So in total our cast, including the two comperes is made up of 8 people.
Someone always gets a day off, but you never know yourself which character you are going to be, so you can be drunk as Demetrius one day and then find yourself as Lysander the next day completely hungover and your brain is completely switched around. Our mantra is never make anything easy for the actors!
So you do rotate the drunk actors so you don’t have any alcoholics?
Yes, we are not that cruel! We have been very lucky with casting and over the years actors tend to want to stay within the company, so you treat each other as you would your friend – we are a very close company. You have to trust the people you are giving yourself over to that night, to make sure that yes, you’re going to have fun and yes, you’re going to make a fool of yourself tonight, but its going to be done in the best possible way. We do look after each other.
How did it all start for you?
So I’m Producing this tour and I’ve been here since day dot as a group of actor friends from drama school 15 years ago, two of them ran a theatre company, Lewis and Chris, and they came up with this idea, thought it would never work. They told me about it doing theatre and music festival – it got printed and so we said “let’s do it” they asked me to Direct the first one and I thought that sounds like pure chaos and I’m up for it! Since then, we are all jobbing actors and I’ve acted in (Sh*tface Shakespeare) every single year and we have actors, directors and producers within the company and we’ve got America, Australia and the UK – so we are always expanding!
Did the company start off in festivals?
Yes we started in Secret Garden Party and it was a 120 seat venue and it sold out almost immediately and year on year we kept dipping our toe in a larger theatres and realising within a two or three days that we selling out for the run.
It’s amazing, we have become a staple of the Edinburgh Fringe, we at the York Fringe and the Brighton Fringe as well, and we’ve gone to America for months at a time and Lewis who runs the company based in Boston where we first went. We also go to Australia for 8 weeks a year, its crazy!
It’s our first UK tour in the sense that we do York and Brighton and Edinburgh but this is the first time we have ventured outside of that. We do a 5 month stint at Leicester Square but this is where we find out if it will still work in Lincoln or Crewe and to our surprise, it’s been amazing.
We have lovely audiences that travel far and wide to see the show but people in Haines or Lincoln are going absolutely crazy for it and it’s a far larger reaction that we could even dream of.
So how does it translate overseas? Americans already think we drink far too much, so how is this helping our image?
You go on stage and think “oh, everyone sounds like Hugh Grant, they are so lovely and polite” but the American actors who do it across in Boston and Austin can be quite brash and say exactly what they think. Whereas we are showing them one hand where we are lovely Shakespearean British actors and then the chaos comes out and the language, crude, lewd nature comes out and it can be quite shocking – as it we have lulled them into a false sense of security.
American audiences are amazing, they laugh riot and they are just so eager to be entertained. With British audiences they are, “right, we’ve paid our money, we know Shakespeare – entertain us” so you earn that and work hard to make sure that they learn some Shakespeare but also give them an enjoyable evening.
So we make you earn your ticket fee?
Well, yes, but that’s good – you can’t rest on your laurels!
With humble beginnings – are you where you want to be in your career?
I’m very fortunate as I’ve been a member from the start and last year I went away to do some work with Gentleman Jack the period drama, so went for 6 months of filming but I had a week or two off in-between, so it meant I could come into the west end and then go back and film.
We all know what it is to be an actor and how hard you work to gain parts, so we will bend over backwards so others can go off and do other things. So from that perspective I’m very happy as I get to have my cake and eat it – I can hang out with my friends and do this great Improv comedy Shakespeare and then pop off and do film and TV whenever it comes up.
As for the company, we are just in a constant state of shock that we made it past day one! Everything’s just like “oh so we are going to Australia now!” so we have been very very fortunate.
Is Shakespeare the only plays you do or are there plans to branch out to any others totally Sh*tfaced?
It’s always Shakespeare but we have a sister company called Sh*tfaced Showtime and they do musicals. They are currently rehearsing for a Pissedmas Carol at Leicester Square Theatre and that’s produced by Issy Wright – we leave them to their own devices, as they can sing it and we can’t!
I’m not an actor or singer, but if I’ve had a few – I am!
This is why I only ever sing Chaka Khan!
Do you prefer Comedy or Tragedy Shakespeare?
I was always of the opinion that tragedies won’t last and we should stick with the comedies and then the past few years we started introducing more tragedies. They are by far more fun to do as an performer – we are all classically trained actors, so we all are rehearsing as a standard, serious Shakespeare play, no one is drunk when we are rehearsing, so to try and get any emotional weight across, when the drunk is trying to take their clothes off in a graveyard scene. It’s hard to do “alas poor Yorrick” when they can’t get through the first line, or they keep dropping the skull!
We went straight from Hamlet in the West End right into Midsummers Night’s Dream and it’s been my favourite to date, its so much fun to do and awful to try and get out the most Shakespeare amidst all the chaos.
What do you hope that the Swindonians will take away on the night of the 12th having seen Sh*tfaced Shakespeare?
I’ve just looked at the rota and I’m the drunk on the 12th, so this is going to be fun!
I hope you come away thinking “I understand Midsummer a little bit more” and also “what the hell was going on?!” Just a mix of feelings, you seeing something theatrical and well put together and also slightly confused and wanting to find out more about Shakespeare.
It is going to be pure chaos and you never know what is going to happen! Expect the unexpected!
I am very excited to see Saul and the rest of Sh*tfaced Shakespeare on Tuesday and fully expect to be serenaded with Chaka Khan, Chaka Chaka, Chaka Khan.
Shit-faced Shakespeare will be at Wyvern Theatre on 12th November.
Tickets are available online www.swindontheatres.co.uk or by calling the box office on 01793 524481.
