Shakespeare x 5 – ZOO Playground ★★

There is a wonderfully simple idea at the heart of Shakespeare x 5.The Bulgarian company Hand Theatre arrive armed with little more than two performers, Shakespeare’s most famous tragedy and a determination to reinvent it repeatedly. Performers Ivomir Ignatov-Kenny and Zdravka Hristozova take Romeo and Juliet and tell it five different ways: sped up, slowed down, transformed through audience participation, reimagined through physical comedy and eventually pushed towards something more cinematic and chaotic. Initially, the premise is enormously appealing. After all, Romeo and Juliet has survived for centuries precisely because it can withstand endless reinvention. Hand Theatre’s approach treats the play almost like a theatrical laboratory experiment, asking how many forms a familiar story can inhabit before it changes completely. The audience watches not only Shakespeare’s tragedy but the performers’ increasingly desperate attempts to communicate it. There are moments when the show…