SHAKESPEARE CRACKPOT by Keir Cutler. Robert Gill Theatre. July 5 at 6:15 pm, July 7 at noon, July 8 at 4 pm, July 9 at 1:45 pm. Buy tickets. Rating: NNN
Keir Cutler’s latest Shakespeare-themed Fringe show rehashes some of his earlier material by sending up his smug and self-satisfied university profs, as he did in Teaching Shakespeare, and tackling the authorship question, as he did in Is Shakespeare Dead?
It’s all to demonstrate that a lot of formal education encourages the memorization and regurgitation of facts rather than independent thinking and critical thought.
Cutler doesn’t quite connect to his material – there’s a lack of spontaneity to his performance. And there’s not much to look at in the show there’s no reason for this to be a piece of theatre and not an essay.
The best moments come from Cutler’s stories about the marketing of the Bard in Stratford-upon-Avon. And there’s genuine warmth in his tales of his own remarkable parents, who defied the limitations of their upbringing to achieve great things in their fields.