Alas! Poor Yorick

Part of the York International Shakespeare Festival

If the Two Ronnies were cast as the Gravediggers in Shakespeare’s Hamlet re-written by Samuel Beckett you might have something like Ridiculusmus's “Alas! Poor Yorick”.

Mixing the mundane with the magical; moments of banal idiocy are interspersed with ones of cinematic elegance to an underscore of groans, grunts and the odd Shakespearean aside.

The legendary independent theatre double act of Jon Haynes and David Woods pull out every trick in their theatrical playbook to create a fresh take on Shakespeare’s much-loved clowns, re-enacting all the preceding acts of the original and meticulously staging the famous graveyard scene in all its 420 year-old glory.

Flipping the Shakespearean original tragedy into an existential clown piece, Ridiculusmus cast aside chaos and mistaken murders to unearth a beautiful and oddly moving meditation on work, faith and existence, with the prevaricating protagonist offered in a refreshingly contemporary light.

Running time: 60 minutes