‘Conyngham carries all these turns deftly and with seemingly boundless energy on stage’
It’s a rare and joyous thing to see a creative riff on Shakespeare’s plays that is not only deeply invested in their stories but shows just as much appreciation for the language in which they are told. Understudy No 5, a work in progress directed by Warren Rusher, with technical support from Lyla Rose, and written and performed by Hadrian Conyngham, is not an academic imitation of the Bard, nor does it revel in distinguishing itself from his style by being ostensibly “modern”. Conyngham has simply written a beautiful play, which just happens to be a commentary on Hamlet, Romeo and Juliet, A Midsummer Night’s Dream and Twelfth Night.
The protagonist is a janitor who, while sweeping up the backstage areas of a theatre, inexplicably becomes possessed by various secondary Shakespeare characters every time he touches one of their props or costume elements. Since he is unable to speak himself, we are left wondering whether he is a mere vessel for these fictional voices or if it is his own buried thoughts that have found their own vessels, a means to rush into the spotlight by hiding behind the mask of acting.
As a whole, the play can be described as an ambitious set of narrative device Russian dolls. The janitor’s possessions serve to comment on the idea of secondary characters: if a protagonist must have agency and a wilful impact on the story in order to make it entertaining, where does that leave the other roles? Why doesn’t the audience care that their fates seem to be mere consequences of the plot, and not of their own actions? And which role better reflects the nature of our own lives? Are some of us Romeos, some of us Benvolio’s? Or are we all Conyngham’s versions of Cobweb and Feste: unsure of whether our very thoughts can ever be truly our own and faced, and the end of our lives, with the realisation that we were always, perhaps, a little obsolete.?
Another strength of the play is that it doesn’t seek any answers to these questions, rather committing to explore them in more ways than one. The janitor approaches his existential dread through the lens of class, only to move to a socially privileged character with bitterness in his heart merely because he is not at the centre of events. Conyngham carries all these turns deftly and with seemingly boundless energy on stage. He draws us in and makes us wish we could hear the words again many times, always in his voice.
With such a dense and meticulously constructed text, a reluctance towards exposition is understandable. It might, however, be necessary. Even putting aside audiences who aren’t steeped in Shakespeare, there is a lack of clarity in some of the character changes and even within the narrative structure of the play. A few expositional staging ideas might go a long way towards preventing us from wondering what the stakes are at a given moment and better connecting us to the play’s emotional core.
As Understudy No 5 is a work in progress, audiences should be on the lookout for future showings. This is definitely one to watch.
Review date: 31st August 2026
Star Rating: FOUR