Shakespeare’s Terminator the Second got my vote as the most clever show at this years Fringe. The show presented by Hardly Working Productions, was a 17th century version of the film Terminator 2 Judgement Day constructed solely of lines form the plays of Shakespeare. The film is a classic and it was surprisingly easy to accept Shakespeare’s dialogue used throughout with just proper names changes to to match the screen version. The casting of muscular Matt Doman in the roll of Schwarzenegger was spot on. He would sometimes just stand still on stage looking ripped and stoic and the joke became clear that thus was all that Schwarzenegger had ti do in the original film.
Jolie Hart was wonderful as the adolescent John Connor. Pam Stone as Sarah Connor truly carried the show performing amazing monologues of her prescient visions of doomsday. John Reid Adams is as the shape shifting T-1000 parried with the terminator with some thrilling and inspired swordplay choreographed by Bill Warriner. The production was often comic in it tributes and nods towards the original film. My favorite was the liquid metal ending which they stages with a simple flaming sheet behind which many of the cast were crouched. When the T100 terminator fell into the liquid metal various cat members who had been killed by the T100 them flailed up from behind the sheet in quick succession as the unit melted into oblivion.
Director Simon Needham had the scene changes coming in quick succession with the monologues being fires off just as fast. This presented a challenge for this artist working with a traditional 17th century sketching method but I loved every entertaining moment. The only line not written by Shakespeare was, “Ill be back.”
