By Avery Saad
The Cast of The Upstart Crow; credit: Johan Persson
Upstart Crow was a low-budget sitcom about the Crow Folios, and Shakespeare, that was on air from 2016 to 2018, with one special in 2020. And it should have ended there. This stage adaptation was a two hour long farcical nightmare from start to finish. The Guardian’s Mark Lawson writes “Punchlines and slapstick are meticulously timed, culminating in a spectacular sight-gag…” and I have to completely disagree. So many of the gags were ill-timed, or just blatantly not funny. The outdated jokes paired well with faulty slapstick and mediocre technical aspects to create the perfect recipe for this nightmare.
The “iconic” low budget sets seemed to have carried over into the Apollo Theatre. At the beginning, the low-budget technical aspects were a quite funny part of the slapstick comedy, however it got old quickly when jokes were used over and over and over, and eventually beaten beyond death. The high-school trick of using sheets to create ‘rough waters’ was fun at first, until it just looked tacky after being reused, and the lack of actual door to the flat in which Shakespeare stayed in got old especially quick, once the timing of the actors was so off with the sound cue. Director Sean Foley used the same tactics for the stage as he had done with the screen, and it made the show feel stale.
It makes me wonder where their budget went? Cheap Halloween costumes were the butt of one of the many (poorly made) jokes, along with a patchy bear costume–so clearly not the costume department; and the sound effects were minimal and so annoyingly late, that they surpassed slapstick and were just disappointing. The advertisements for the production were just David Mitchell’s face, and relied heavily on the cult following of the TV series. Did the entire budget go to their main actors? David Mitchell, in my opinion, was not worth it. There was nothing noteworthy from the comedian, except for maybe his deliverance of a monologue from King Lear around the beginning of (an unnecessarily long) act two. Or maybe it went to the Game of Thrones actress playing Kate, Gemma Wheelen. However, I had the privilege of seeing her understudy, Annabel Smith. Smith was the highlight of the performance for me, and while her character had many, many flaws, she managed to make the play somewhat bearable, some of the time.
The show is based on the well-known sitcom, which begs me as a reviewer to ask about the audience. What does this show, in all of its racist, homophobic and sexist glory, say about its audience? Laughing at antisemitic stereotypes, racially charged jokes, and repeated sexist digs all under the guise of being “woke” discouraged me severely. Are queer relationships and gender fluidity still that funny? “Everybody gets made fun of” seemed to be a theme throughout The Upstart Crow, meaning they pulled no punches–neither will I.
Playwright Ben Elton’s script was the worst part. Shakespearean plots play with gender and sexuality, however The Upstart Crow made a point to go above and beyond what the Bard had previously done, and repeatedly made queer identities the butt of the joke–especially lesbians: a comment about a trip to the isle of Lesbos, or the ‘slapstick’ queer kiss on stage just to make the audience laugh are two of many examples. Just because one or two characters constantly speak to the audience and make fun of England for how unprogressive it was in the early 1600’s (and reference it’s lack of progressiveness in the modern era once or twice) does not give a straight, white, cisgender, middle-aged man the excuse to write such jokes in the modern age. I also have to voice my disappointment for Elton’s antisemitic jokes, for two reasons: the first being that the joke was antisemitic and based on egregious and harmful stereotypes, and the second being that Elton’s father was a Jewish, German refugee, who escaped Germany in 1939 to avoid persecution by the Nazis.
I have to give Elton some credit for maintaining the show’s running gag of making fun of modern day problems in old Shakespearean English, although some of it was being reused, such as the joke about rut-filler being word for word from the premiere episode from all the way back in 2016. There was a newer joke about TFL’s slogan “See it. Say it. Sorted.” that garnered a genuine laugh throughout the audience. Mitchell’s Shakespeare was yet again voicing his complaints against the transportation system in England, and proclaimed that some of the new ‘rules’ floating around are just ridiculous. This included a gag around “seeing someone that could look catholic” and following the new rules: “See it, Slay it, Slaughtered”.
Overall, the script was poorly written, the acting was mediocre, and the plot was more convoluted and dense than one of Shakespeare’s own concocting, and yet I still left feeling hate-crimed and dumber than before. The Upstart Crow should have stayed a dead sitcom, but it didn't. So instead, it should promptly exit the Apollo Theatre, pursued by its over done, Monty-Python, bear gag.
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