Review! Sh!tFaced Shakespeare's Romeo & Juliet at Leicester Square Theatre

A tale of two star-crossed lovers, one very drunk actor, and an audience encouraged to make matters worse.

If you’ve been following The Theatre Flyer for a while, you’ll know we love Shakespeare with a difference. This is Romeo and Juliet, condensed and rehearsed as you’d expect from a cast of professional actors. Except, come show night, one of those actors will be… you guessed it, shitfaced!

And if you’re expecting this to be a deadly serious review of Shakespeare, you’re very much mistaken. This is Sh!tfaced Shakespeare, after all.

The rules are simple: audience members are chosen to wield a prop that gives them the power to make the drunk actor have another drink on top of everything they’ve already consumed in the hours before the show. And what happens next? Hilarious chaos.

John Mitton, playing both Juliet’s father and Tybalt, had the honour of doing the drinking for the audience. After three-quarters of a small bottle of whiskey and three cans of beer, it’s safe to say that from his very first lisped lines, we knew we were in for a lot of fun.

I’m no Shakespeare expert—in fact, this was my first time seeing a Sh!tfaced production of a play I’m already familiar with—but I still managed to learn a surprising amount! For example, did you know Ricycles were discontinued seven years ago, while Frosted Wheats only disappeared four months ago? I also discovered that Juliet’s drunken father can fall in love with the wooden framing of the stage—and who knew Tybalt Montague was the son of Alan Rickman?

The sober cast members have quite the task themselves, having to stay in character while navigating the frequent changes, improvisation and ad-libs brought about by their increasingly drunk co-star. Some of my favourite moments came when Stephanie Simpson, as Juliet, discovered that she and “Carrie” perhaps aren’t quite so different after all. Or perhaps when the climax of the play unfolded rather differently from what Shakespeare originally intended?

Another particularly memorable moment came from Charlie Keable, who delivered what I’m fairly certain was the speediest monologue I’ve ever witnessed—and, somehow, did so rather impressively.

The glorious thing about these productions is that you actively want things to go wrong. Whether it’s a forgotten or altered line, an unexpected audience interaction or a full-blown set disaster, it’s all part of the infectious charm of the show. You never quite know what’s coming next, and that unpredictability keeps the audience laughing from start to finish.

It’s Shakespeare as you’ve never seen it before: chaotic, unpredictable and absolutely hilarious.

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

Romeo and Juliet is playing at the Leicester Square Theatre until 19th September 2026 before it embarks on a UK tour.#

Sh!t-faced Shakespeare®: Romeo and Juliet - London & UK Tour — Sh!t-faced Shakespeare®