Madman William
ONLINE
Philadelphia
Sept. 27, 2025
Watch here
This show is part of the Philadelphia Fringe Festival, which is running now through Sept. 28. Find out what else is showing this month through FringeArts on their calendar here.
Hamlet, Macbeth and King Lear walk into a bar, only to find themselves in modern times. That's the basis of "Madman William," a do-it-yourself video project that raises existential questions via amateur film skills.
This year, Philadelphia Fringe has offered virtual programming for people who can’t make it to in-person shows. Virtual programming offers specifically disabled, homebound or covid-cautious folks an opportunity to participate in arts programming that is normally limited to inaccessible theaters or cramped community spaces. While searching for which digital performances I would be attending, a modern Shakespeare interpretation rose to the top as a classic category of Fringe performance.
“Madman William” was written by Naomi Claire Wallace and produced by The Music Firm, a theater company that has churned out multiple shows that have appeared in the international Fringe circuit in Edinburgh. The digital show depicts a modern take on Shakespeare, where major characters coexist in Shakespeare’s dreamscape. As he struggles to write, Shakespeare falls asleep in order for the audience to meet Hamlet, Macbeth and King Lear who sit in a bar and bemoan their “dismal” lives. Mercutio shows up to provide drama wearing a slutty suit, revealing to the leading men that they are trapped in a dream (aka, in Shakespeare's mind). Awkward stage fighting and silly quippage ensue.
This video project offers the virtual Fringe viewer a festival staple: an ambitious DIY Shakespeare play made accessible. Still, the video left me with more questions than answers. I was expecting a recording of a play set in front of an audience. Instead, virtual audience members purchased tickets for a bizarre art-house style Youtube video.
Papyrus font takes us into this Shakespeare-loving group project. The video is cloaked in a silly black and white filter, and seems to be shot on an iPhone. The play is full of passion for these classic characters, and the choppy dialogue only adds to the Fringe-y quality. As an audience-of-one attending the show from my living room, the fever-dream facet of the show was only amplified by viewing it alone. Existential questions the players continuously asked about who and where they were seeped into my psyche. This is a perfect experience if you are looking for an opportunity to feel like you are but a figment of the collective imagination, though attending a more traditional Shakespeare interpretation with fellow audience members might yield less mind-altering results.
Digital Fringe go-ers must be able to experience a rough-and-tumble Shakespeare production, just as our in-person counterparts surely will. The basis of accessibility is providing a breadth of experiences for users, one that accurately represents the offerings of the outside world. The quality of Digital Fringe should be consistent with the festival, though it has fewer shows to offer. “Madman William” proved to be a rougher video project, but that isn’t necessarily out of the ordinary for a Fringe experience. As I sort through Fringe's other digital events this month, I might steer clear of Shakespeare — but I definitely won’t forget my roots.
