FringeReview UK 2024

Alas! Poor Yorick

Ridiculusmus

Genre: Absurd Theatre, Classical and Shakespeare, Clown, Comedic, Contemporary

Venue: Malthouse Theatre Canterbury

Festival: FringeReview UK

Low Down

Review

The donkey has had his happy pills and the load feels lighter, the carrot a bit closer to his nose. This helps, because digging graves is hard graft, especially if your partner is unsure which section of the cemetery is for Christian burials and insists on theatrically measuring each step around a prospective spot, laying the planks precisely.

The opening scene of the latest play by the always inventive Ridiculusmus is an audacious tease. Will two hapless men and an elderly donkey (a snortingly emphatic David Woods, also the second digger) ever dig this grave? One is prevaricating, dully observing protocol (Jon Haynes) the other a work-shy chancer more interested in clocking off than on. Their awkward interactions build an underlying sense of dread “I can’t do it anymore…I’m an old man.” And yet, like the Beckett characters they somewhat resemble, they go on.

Wood and Haynes have devised shows together since 1992, taking diverse, prescient subjects like the Irish ‘troubles’ (Say Nothing, performed on a patch of turf) mental illness (Give Me Your Love, David on stage in a cardboard box) and more recently Beautiful People about ageing (previously called Die! Die! Die! Old People Die!). Their work is consistently intelligent, playful and surprising whether tackling a serious topic or a two-handed adaptation of The Importance of Being Earnest.

So it’s guaranteed that their version of Hamlet will disrupt and maybe baffle the audience. It becomes almost existentialist; having established the gravediggers as two old blokes, working for peanuts, they question why they are doing this. What drives Wood and Haynes to make theatre with no budget or touring support after 34 years? Maybe it was Shakespeare.

With a set comprising two mounds of earth (which along with a wheelbarrow, two planks and spade form the company rider) a space more intimate than the raised, wide stage of the Malthouse would ease the audience into the offers to connect. In a scene of aching poignancy, grave-digger Woods looks into the rows of seats as if reading gravestones, seeking audience names. At this performance no-one responded; but perhaps being asked to supply your own epitaph was too much for a Tuesday night. The lofty acoustic means that some words get lost beneath a musical score and bird song punctuated by the blast of a rook-scarer and scattering of wings (soundscape by David Woods).

The best jokes, says the blokey digger, have a set up, a twist and a punchline, and Alas! Poor Yorick takes a good 30 minutes of banter, clowning and clever word-play before revealing its twist. Shakespeare begins to drive the action, Hamlet the play comes alive in ostentatiously performed short scenes lit then blacked-out to shouts of ‘Close!’ The player King poisons Claudius, Polonious is famously stabbed behind the arras, Ophelia – Woods with a napkin on his head – goes flutteringly mad. Haynes dramatically orates soliloquys from the wrong plays.

Having given us the plot points, Ridiculusmus revel in a punchline that knowingly overstays its welcome, peddling backwards through the whole play with actions in reverse speeded up, mangled in places and occasionally astounding – it seems you can throw water as if its going back into the bottle.

As an extended metaphor for the making of theatre; the digging, extracting and discovering, the filling in and making good, Ridiculusmus once again make their mark. For those who seek provocative performance, that offers new ways of looking and thinking, Alas! Poor Yorick is a heady ride, albeit on a decrepit, hungry donkey.

Published October 24, 2024 by Lisa Wolfe