REVIEW | Sh!t-faced Showtime: A Pissedmas Carol, Leicester Square Theatre

Reviews

2 Dec

Written by Cathie

Disclaimer: We were invited to watch this performance in return for an honest review.

General warnings: Offensive language, strong views, flashing lights, loud horns, partial nudity, audience participation, drunken singalong

The Sh!t Faced Showtime brand is created and managed by the company Magnificent Bastard Productions. This year they have returned to London and inhabit the Leicester Square Theatre. It’s a fairly hidden wonderland under the Curzon Theatre, which makes walking into this show feel remarkably like Alice falling through the rabbit hole.

The show’s premise is simple: five classically trained actors, a fabulously talented pianist, and a narrator/ drunk wrangler try to perform A Christmas Carol. However there is a twist, one cast member is rip-roaringly, horrifyingly, and utterly ‘Sh!tfaced’. The narrator is a very burly Charles Dickens who breaks down all the ground rules of the show as it will unfurl. Three audience members are given different tools to help the show along, including a bucket, Christmas bells and a Christmas cracker. Two are used to make the cast member drunker and the other for when they’re really really drunk. Dickens himself uses a horn to interrupt the story when cast members get too out of hand or it breaks too far away from the constraints of the plot. Apparently, 17 horns have already broken previously and the 18th very nearly got broken the night I saw it. Then he shows what the drunken cast member has imbibed over the last four hours to get ready for the show. Dickens also iterates that the cast member knows their limits and is cared for by supportive members on stage.

Thus, the story then unfolds in a whirl of songs, plot segues and chaos. Although we’re not told who the drunk cast member is that night, you can figure it out within 30 seconds. Tonight’s drunk was Tiny Tim, played hilariously by Issy Wroe Wright, who did well to portray most of her character’s lines and sing quite beautifully in parts. Any doubts you might have whether the cast member is actually drunk is very quickly resolved by her stage presence. Despite my genuine fear that the drunk cast member would get hurt during their numerous falls, the sense of freedom and joy emanating from her was dazzling to watch.

One of the most interesting aspects of this format is that when drunk we’re unable to hide our true selves from the world. Wright seems like a great person to go on a night out with from her hilarious foulmouthed segways, semi-destruction of the set and partial flashing moments aside. The cutest part was seeing just how much she loves her real-life partner Hal Hillman, who plays Bob Cratchit on stage, as most of her scenes were trying to distract or seduce him with terrible Potter puns. Hillman’s portrayal of young Scrooge and Cratchit were earnestly sincere, although some of the shenanigans going on meant the relationships of the Cratchits was like a very twisted soap opera.

Other standout performances include Daniel Quirke and Katie Lynch, who performed brilliantly as the Christmas ghosts and made me roar with laughter through most of the show. Lynch’s dancing into Scrooge’s past and Quirke’s Mrs Fezziwick in particular will make me giggle for a long time to come. John Milton was also absolutely brilliant as the curmudgeonly Scrooge considering he’d been the drunk performer the night before. He played Scrooge’s grouchiness and disdain for the world as well as Michael Caine or Alastor Sims and was twice as hilarious.

The genuine camaraderie among the cast was fabulous to watch and you could see a great team working together in strange circumstances. If they’re this talented at performing when dealing with a drunken cast member, I’d also be very interested in seeing them all performing sober together in different format.

The show is supposed to be about an hour, but due to drunken high jinks of my experience, it lasted roughly an hour and a half. It was quite amusing when poor beleaguered Dickens interrupted the initial office scene to say, “this scene usually takes five minutes but has now taken twenty, we need to get a move on!” We were definitely left wanting more as an audience. This audience itself was one of the liveliest I’ve been sat in for a long time. The show was very pantoesque with the audience singing along to some of the many Christmas renditions performed in stage and the iconic ‘he’s behind you!’ line was also used to great effect.

It’s a show that proudly defies any attempt at neat categorization or limitation. It reminds you that theatre can be all about fun and frivolity, not just serious pondering of life. A strong highlight of Fringe theatre, it is bonkers, unpredictable chaos and a rollicking good time. If you want a distinctly adult version of A Christmas Carol which feels straight out of the Victorian Music halls mixed with a laddish or students’ night out then this is definitely the show for you.