Shakespeare's First Drafts Review

Love potions, donkey heads, and fairies

My very first visit to K-Teas Cakes was a real pleasure. It was like stepping into a huge version of my nan’s sitting room, complete with full sized squashy armchairs and antique cups and saucers. Ok, she never had such a varied selection of tea and cakes on offer, but the comfort and welcome were indeed the same.

I was here to review Shakespeare’s First Draft with some trepidation. It was Shakespeare! Never the easiest to grasp and follow I had to admit.

We are all well used to seasoned actors delivering the famous lines and prose, but this show proves that even the bard himself had to work long and hard to gain the perfection we have come to expect.

Imagine a harassed secondary school teacher trying to coach Year 8 into successfully delivering the lines of a play penned during his lunch hour.

We experienced alternative takes featuring the familiar love potions, donkey heads, and fairies, but seeing these scenes constantly halted, reimagined, redirected and re-explained to the budding stars made us realise that it is never easy to get it right first time (or even tenth time).

I couldn’t help wondering whether Richard Curtis would be flattered that this version of Shakespeare borrowed a well-known line from Notting Hill. See if you can spot it yourself.

However you choose to view this show, it will hopefully help you to understand why Shakespeare’s work has stood the test of time, but also wonder if he lost most of his hair writing and re-writing all of those scenes.