Living Spit Omlet: Prince of Henmark

Stu McLoughlin brings The Tragedy of Omlet Prince of Hen-mark to Blakehay Theatre on 15 and 16 October, a one-man retelling of Hamlet with an egg in the lead. It's billed as 'Hamlet rehatched', and the premise does exactly what the title suggests: the brooding Prince of Denmark is reimagined as Omlet, Prince of Hen-mark, a fragile egg-figure driven by his own 'Egg-sistential angst'. He's joined by a supporting cast of vegetables and foodstuffs, so the court of Elsinore is less a royal palace and more a kitchen counter.

McLoughlin carries the whole thing himself, playing all the parts in a single show. He mixes live original music with perishable puppetry, and the script leans heavily on bad puns—the opening line is 'O, that this too too solid shell'. It's a one-man operation that manages to hit the main beats of the original while keeping the tone firmly in the absurd, with the puppetry and the puns doing a lot of the heavy lifting.

If you're familiar with the play, you'll recognise the story beating underneath the egg-themed makeover. If you're not, it's a good place to start, since the whole thing is played for laughs rather than high drama. It's a small-scale, handmade kind of show, with McLoughlin handling the music and the puppets on his own.

It runs at Blakehay Theatre (BS23 1JZ) in Bristol on Thursday 15 and Friday 16 October. Two nights, so you've got a couple of chances to catch it.