The Hip-Hop Shakespeare Company

Okay I'm going to put my hands up here: I did roll my eyes when I heard about this going on. "Oh look, another patronising and feeble attempt to reach out to The Youth in their own language".

As usually is the case I was proven wrong. Gladly so in fact; the evening was a lot of fun as we saw various members of the company perform bits for the bespoke audience made up of all kind of ages and backgrounds (although I've never felt so old and uncool in a crowd before. It didn't help that I am old and uncool).

I was partly right though in that the connection between their art and that of Shakespeare was made unclear at best, and tenuous at worst, but for me that wasn't the point. Live music is always great, and the eclectic mix I saw tonight was well worth the entry fee (which happened to be nothing). Yes, okay, there was a bit of a clever experiment at the start where we had to guess whether a quote was from modern hip-hop or the bard himself - and yes it was fun and surprising - but that message quickly got lost as the night progressed. Of course it could quite possibly have been my lack of coolness missing the point.

All in all though it was a brilliant couple of hours out and I had a lot of fun. The hip-Hop Shakespeare Company is well worth checking out if you get the chance.