"Sardined Shakespeare" by Bear Left Theatre Company.
Lee Rosy's Tearoom, Hockley.

This is the first time that I have visited this venue for anything more than a cup of coffee and a piece of cheesecake, but down in the depths of Lee Rosy's is a performance space which, albeit small, provided a space for four actors to get up close and quite personal with their audience.

"Sardined Shakespeare" is very similar to one of those 1970's compilation albums that, none of the cast will be old enough to remember, from record labels like K-Rel, Ronco and Arcade. 20 or so tracks, not in full, made up a greatest hits of the hits from that period, and that's a bit like this performance; a greatest hits of Bill the Bard.

Christopher Collins, Carly Smith, Stephi Durand and Sally Nix.performed segments from 15 of Shakespeare's comedy, romance and tragedy classics with only a few changes of costumes and the odd props.

The thing about Shakespeare is that you have to be able to act well to pull off a convincing interpretation of the words, get the rhythm right and be able to understand and get your audience to understand the story. With this being many plays rapidly segueing into each other, the flow and the magic of Shakespeare's words could well have been stilted, but if you didn't know that these were many separate plays, you would not have known.

There were a couple of times that the speeches didn't flow as smoothly as maybe the actor would have liked but these words, as any actor who has performed Shakespeare will confirm, don't, sometimes, flow naturally. Remembering the words and the character you're playing from each individual play I can only imagine isn't easy but these four provided a very entertaining two hour montage.

It was good to hear a few practised and additional to the Shakespeare "ad libs" which added more comedy as well as kept the flow from one play to another.

Our four Shakespearios were extremely confident, let's face it you'd need to be with the closeness of the audience. there was great passion in the dramatic scenes and the comedy was also very evident, which in some Shakespeare plays, as part of the whole play, may be often not quite so apparent.

Some people may shy away from Shakespeare for fear of not understanding. The pieces chosen, and the way that they are performed, present no difficulty to the newbie Shakespeare fan,
as well as those, like myself.who enjoy Shakespeare but would no way class himself as an expert on the subject of.

You can catch this enjoyable and unusual performance on Friday at Lee Rosy's Tearooms on Broad Street, in the Lace Market and then at College Street Studio Theatre on Saturday.

If you've not got Much Ado About Nothing to do this weekend, I can Macbet(h) you enjoy this. It's Shakespeare, As You Like It!

Tickets are only £5.00!!!