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Three Alternative Shakespeare Shows

By Caro Moses | Published on Wednesday 3 August 2022

Three alternative Shakespeare shows at Edinburgh Festival 2022…

Thom Tuck And Tim FitzHigham: Macbeth | Underbelly Cowgate | 4-20 Aug
There’s always something of an abundance of productions of Shakespeare’s work at the Festival, and alongside the more traditional stagings, there are also usually plenty that use the Bard’s work as a jumping off point, or simply just mess with it. I thought we’d take a look at a few falling into that latter category, starting with one that’s in the comedy section, so you can be sure that this is not a standard version of the great Scottish tragedy. It’s brought to you by two long term, delightful favourites of ours – TW Editors’ Award winners no less – so you can expect something highly entertaining, and with a different guest director daily, an ever-changing beast. Click here for info and tickets.

Waiting For Hamlet | theSpace Triplex | 6-26 Aug
“Being dead doesn’t mean you have to take it lying down, but you can’t put right what’s rightly written wrong”. This one’s in the theatre section, but it’s a comedy, so it promises to be another amusing riff on what we all understand to be a tragedy, and an award-winning one to boot. This time it’s Hamlet in the limelight – or rather, his royal dad in the afterlife – as ‘Waiting For Hamlet’ – a play that won the Kenneth Branagh New Writing Award – sees the deceased king stuck in purgatory with his old jester Yorick. Murdered (as you no doubt well know) by his brother, Hamlet Senior seeks revenge, and to win back both his queen and his crown, whilst Yorick tries to stop him from making the biggest mistake of his post-life existence. Click here for info and tickets.

Midsummer | theSpace @ Niddry Street | 15-27 Aug (pictured)
We’re really intrigued by this one, which gives ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’ what you might call a serious facelift. US-based theatre company Tiltyard have ripped apart the play at the seams and reconstructed it using text from every other Shakespeare play, so when you see it, you’ll basically (sort of) have seen the entire oeuvre. And as well as sounding pleasingly adventurous, this adaptation also addresses serious contemporary concerns: “A radical Shakespearean remix for an era of ecological crisis, ‘Midsummer’ is an opportunity to reawaken our faith, and to ask ourselves the moment’s all-important question: In a heartsick, broken, wintery world, how do we imagine a future?” Click here for info and tickets.