'Rough Magic' review — this wacky mash-up of Shakespeare plays is fun for all the family

Read our review of the Olivier Award-nominated Rough Magic, now in performances at Shakespeare's Globe to 23 August.

Devised by Lucy Cuthbertson, Kerry Frampton and Ben Hales, Rough Magic returns to the Sam Wanamaker Playhouse after a run last summer which earned an Olivier nomination for Best Family Show. This wacky and ambitious production features a mash-up of various Shakespeare plays that feature supernatural elements, and is aimed at ages five to 105.

The audience is invited to become apprentice guardians of this magical world with the choice of being a witch, fairy/other forest spirit, ghost, monster, or other supernatural being of choice – as a child, I would have wanted to have been a fairy but am now definitely in my witch era (confirmed by the personality quiz in the programme).

It transpires that the three witches from Macbeth aren’t really so wicked, and the chain of events and deaths were all a terrible mistake due to their clumsy junior member Nona (Rosemarie Akwafo, who makes a lovely anchor figure) getting carried away and prophesying something that isn’t in the Book of Destiny. At least when Puck (Janet Etuk) meddled in affairs that weren’t his concern, no one died.

It runs at almost two hours with an interval when the story would benefit from streamlining and being told straight through in an hour. There are too many diversions, including turns from a pair of plummy-voiced ghosts and a Gallic-accented “shadow”. They’re entertainingly done but don’t add much to the narrative.

The show has got high aspirations with its Shakespeare in-jokes, though the lively young audience didn’t seem perturbed. Nevertheless, no one who hasn’t studied or seen Macbeth can really be expected to have a frame of reference for Banquo or Duncan, and it would have been helpful to have had the solo potted version of the play (performed by the Bette Midler-in-Hocus-Pocus-esque Bryony Twydle as mother-hen witch Audeja) performed at the outset.

The Tudors, however, are clearly an important part of the primary school history curriculum as there was much indignation at the very idea of King Henry IX (the splendidly boisterous Frampton), the villain of the piece who calls the audience “maggots” with all the disdain of a ginger-wigged Miss Trunchbull.

At the interval, I overheard one earnest young man telling his brother, “You need to walk in a more dignified way if you want to be a magical guardian”. However, while dignity has its place, the show would suggest that it’s less important than working together, having a go when faced with a challenge, and reflecting on mistakes as a learning opportunity.

Rough Magic is at Shakespeare's Globe to 23 August. Book Rough Magic tickets on LondonTheatre.co.uk.

Photo credit: Rough Magic (Photos by Manuel Harlan)