by AMY BARRATT

Life's but a walking shadow; a poor player,
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,
And then is heard no more: it is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.
- Macbeth, Act V, Scene 5

The above is one quote that doesn't find its way into Shakespeare: The Lost Play, currently touring parks around the city. It is, however, the speech that popped into my head as I watched this sophomoric exercise. If only, I thought to myself, Repercussion Theatre's Bardish spoof had kept its strutting and fretting to a mere hour.

This tale is not, in fact, "told by an idiot." There's a lot of talent behind it - all of which is wasted on a messy, un-funny script.

Apparently, Jacob Richmond, Tadhg McMahon and Paul Van Dyck enjoyed working together so much - and with director Al Goulem - on last summer's tour of The Complete Works of Shakespeare, Abridged, that they decided to create work for themselves by penning this two-hour digression. What might have been a straightforward spoof of Shakespearean plots and characters, becomes more a story about three guys (nicknamed Jakespeare, Paul-o-nius and M.C. Rap) mounting the play, the text of which was supposedly discovered in the bowels of the Rex Theatre in Ste-Anne-de-Bellevue.

The play-within-the-digression, the Nautical Odyssey of Fecky IX, works in a few familiar plot elements: twins separated at birth, cross-dressing, a ghost dad, with cameos by everyone from Cleopatra to Caliban (he's known as Taliban in this play, and sounds like Gollum from The Hobbit). But the playwrights seem at their happiest when paying tribute to The Sound of Music, TV shows and pop songs. The setting of Hamlet's soliloquy to the tune of Céline's "My Heart Will Go On" is a highlight of the evening. Make of that what you will.

The production is in part a victim of its own gushing publicity. An alleged "synopsis" in the program calls the show a "hilarious must-see comedy smash," a claim I don't think you can make until you've been playing to capacity crowds for at least a week. As for "razor-sharp satire" and "outrageously funny parody," The Lost Play is neither. One joke that wears particularly thin: Van Dyck's character repeatedly mispronounces McMahon's character's name, M.C. Rap, as McCrap.

Repercussion is still recovering from financial difficulties, which is why it hasn't produced a real Shakespeare play (with the attendant large cast) for two years. I'm no purist, but I think if you're going to parody the greatest writer in the English language, your takeoff should at least be well written, and stay a lot closer to the form that inspired it. While doing The Complete Works could be justified by the possibility that it might turn some people on to Shakespeare, The Lost Play is more likely to turn them off.

Shakespeare: The Lost Play is in TMR's Roosevelt Park tonight, July 24, at 8:30pm. It plays Westmount Park from July 25–27. For more info on the tour, call 916-PARK or visit www.shakespeareinthepark.ca

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