Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10

Cast: Mark Gatiss, Arthur Hughes, Harry Kershaw, Renee Lamb, Tom Mothersdale, Alana Ramsey, Martha Travis Ross.

Satire and parody are the right of the human soul to cause disrespectful veneration to the public ideal of a situation or a person. It is the active ingredient in comedy that highlights the absurdity of human detail and experience in such a way that whilst obvious, it can offer relief from the sterile rule book that insists on ego driven reverence to all who are considered our betters and unequal’s.

The Talented Mr Shakespeare by Wilf Scolding is a comedy of inspired irreverence, a courteous impertinence at the cost of England’s greatest writer, of his friendship group of Kit Marlowe and Will Kemp, and one that blends Tudor history with a knowing mockery of the private lives of playwrights as they face murderous revenge and the political will of Queen Elizabeth, the machinations of Sir Robert Cecil, and of the woman scorned, the cunning Lady Audrey Walsingham.

A drunk Shakespeare receives notice that Christopher Marlowe has made it known of his displeasure at the Stratford bard’s insistence of his sole authorship of the Henry VI plays, and that he intends to kill him for such an omission of truth.

It is in this exposition of possible truth that Wilf Scolding tantalisingly regales the listener with a tale of saucy cheek underlining a historical possibility, the impertinence of comedy daring for the listener to mock the unmockable, but all the time understanding the genius of the man, of the legend behind Kit Marlowe, and the historical interjections of England’s greatest monarch, one of its leading players, and the power behind the throne in the guise of its spymaster, Sir Robert Cecil.

Played for laughs but with a serenity of truth behind each carefully layered thought, The Talented Mr Shakespeare is a conviction of satire and praise.

Ian D. Hall