A contemporary reinventon of Shakespeare's sonnets was always going to be a risk. In this case it is one that doesn't pay off. Slow, loosely directed and at a terrible venue, this production is more of a tragedy than a love poem.The show has us following a couple as they traverse the different stages of a relationship - meeting, falling in love, breaking up and getting back together – almost exclusively using Shakespeare's sonnets as dialogue. The idea has some scope for success but was poorly executed with bad use of the source material and direction that lacked discipline.The play clocks in at just under 45 minutes, but even so is slow and lacking in energy. Added to this there are several segments where the actors spent ages putting on or taking off an item of clothing which slows the pace down further and seemed unnecessary.However my biggest gripe is the general disregard for the verse the show was based on. All sense of stress and metre were thrown out as some of the most beautiful poetry in the English language was simply quoted as if it were the phone book. Rather than letting the words tell the story, the performers tried to force it out using too much expression and not trusting the dialogue.This was all exacerbated by a poor choice of venue. Whilst I hesitate to criticise a show on its location a combination of constant drumming from another room throughout and a lack of staff on the doors (about halfway through someone knocked on a door loudly and asked to be let in) as well as terrible acoustics, managed to make the show even harder to follow.I don't like to be so negative about a play but this is a poor piece of scripting, directing and acting. Couple this with the terrible venue and a relatively steep price of £10 for a standard ticket and there is no way I could recommend this show.
