RALEIGH – So that’s how the faeries drink, I mused: from shot glasses with glittering, multicolored LED lights embedded in the base. That’s when the lights went out across Raleigh’s Maywood Hall – a form of theatrical sabotage that wasn’t on the menu of treacheries on offer Saturday night when we came in to catch Scrap Paper Shakespeare‘s MUCH FEAR SHAKESPEARE: MIDSUMMER

Perhaps someone should explain. 

Here’s a novel idea for a theater company fundraiser: Hand out copies of a Shakespeare play to a bunch of actors. Then make them sitting ducks for the lords of misrule – and a mischievous audience – by selling viewers vouchers that let them deliberately sabotage the scene and actor of their choice. 

For three bucks an actor is compelled to do a scene with an accent selected by the buyer; Gilbert Gottfried was one of the more intriguing choices that night. For five, the patron could insert the profanity of their choice into the actor’s lines. A tenner bought a spin on the “Wheel of Fickle Fortune,” which could dictate everyone perform a scene in interpretive dance, or as in a silent movie, or speaking with their tongues out throughout. 

Then came the drinks. Alcoholic ones (courtesy of Trophy Brewing): $15 for a shot of the good stuff, delivered to the actor of choice mid-scene, no less – and $20 for a nip of the bad stuff: the actor’s least favorite potable instead.

As artistic director Emma Szuba Winek helpfully explained at the outset, “If you’ve ever watched Cutthroat Kitchen on the Food Network and thought, ‘This would be the perfect formula for a night of classical theater,’ this show’s for you!” 

A lot of people apparently agreed, as a raucous, fun-loving crew packed Maywood Hall – a venue which had a different name when Bare Theatre staged Marat/Sade there several years ago

As drinks were liberally served, onstage and off, the prompts from the audience got rowdier – and occasionally more surreal – as the night went on. 

Rebecca Ashley Jones‘s King Egeus ruled with an odd Jamaican accent, and Mike Foley’s Oberon, lord of the faeries, sounded suspiciously like Bill Clinton. Benji Taylor Jones’s Titania hissed her way through her love scene with Bottom as Gollum from Lord of the Rings, before Reed Horsley was subjected to the ultimate vocal challenge, with two simultaneous and contradicting sabotages: performing Lysander as Arnold Schwartzenegger – and a Muppet. Chloe Oliver took the directive to perform one scene as a musical to operatic heights; before murky results occurred when “Ill met by moonlight” was hijacked into a film by David Lynch, as cell phones came to the rescue when a power failure left only emergency lights on in the hall.

The ultimate, entertaining result: a night where a healthy dose of improvisational comedy kept a crew of actors on their toes as Shakespeare’s immortal text was liberally seasoned, toasted, and more than occasionally roasted, amid treacherous waves of hooch. A hoot, in short, worth the seeing during their next outing.