The idea behind MUSE: The Shakespeare Mayhem Musical, a musical in which characters from Shakespeare’s plays come alive, is not exactly unheard of in musical theatre. Sondheim’s classic Into the Woods, for instance, brings characters from different fairy tales together to form a new cautionary tale, while Six, the Fringe hit, reconstructs Henry VIII’s story from the perspectives of his wives. MUSE uses a similar device to reinterpret Shakespeare’s characters.

The story begins with Shakespeare (Nate Janis) attempting to rewrite Hamlet, while Anne, his wife, sings about him. Tired and self-doubting, he falls under the influence of Puck (Thomas Bergamo), who gives him wine after he receives a letter from his publisher saying that only one of his plays can be published. In his dream, characters from his works begin to fight for the only opportunity to be published, including titular characters such as King Lear, the Macbeths, Juliet, and Cleopatra. The introductions are all spoken rather than sung, when a strong prologue-style song could help us understand not only which plays the characters come from, but more importantly, establish the tone for the new lives they have been given in this modern interpretation.

The characters then begin to sing to Shakespeare, their creator, about the deaths in his plays and why he hides the death of a lover from one of his characters. The songs by Hanna Andréa are catchy, drawing on the style of contemporary pop music. Their parody of modern ideas about love, mercy and violence is effective, but due to the pop style, the songs are more sentimental than analytical, offering less insight into the tensions between the characters and Shakespeare’s writing of them. This trade-off between contemporary interpretations and pop lyrics, with Shakespeare’s original material and its historical context, also exists in the premise of the musical itself. Why on earth does Shakespeare, one of the greatest playwrights of all time, stay up late worrying about publishing his work? Wouldn’t he be more concerned about whether his work could be performed on stage, where and by whom it would be performed, or even how the audience might react, rather than whether it could be published?

If we return to works such as Six and Into the Woods, the songs in both shows have their own individual roles in telling the story, but they also contribute to a larger theme. The former offers a cautionary story about the way history is interpreted and remembered in a patriarchal society, while the latter becomes a coming-of-age story about social responsibility and learning to deal with the consequences of our actions. MUSE, however, lacks a key moment in which Shakespeare truly confronts the reasons behind the way he constructs his work. It ends with him deciding to self-publish his plays, which feels rather strange for a playwright.

MUSE: The Shakespeare Mayhem Musical has finished its run