Mocking the silent Bard

A silent film version of Shakespeare? Without poetry? This is the crazy proposition presented to Mr Fairybreath, director of the Old Queen's Theatre in 1904, when the fledgling movie industry was knocking on theatreland's doors in search of actors and plots.

But how to film The Tempest without words? And how will actors, who've been playing the same roles the same way for decades, cope with this newfangled technology?

Shooting Shakespeare, which reimagines the first days of cinema via a highly sophisticated use of video technology, has enormous fun at both genres' expense, sending up the ridiculous pretensions of stage actors and the movie moguls' reckless disrespect for art with a surreal jumble of grossly exaggerated acting and self-referential one-liners.

The piece is a little too chaotic, at times baffling and riotously absurd. Yet by drawing on the BFI's archive of early silent Shakespeare films, as well as their own imaginative animated projections and powerful physical vitality, Forkbeard Fantasy provides a fitting testimony to its own subject matter: the rare but wonderful consequences when film and theatre embrace the virtues of each other.

Until Sat, Hackney Empire, 291 Mare Street, 7.30pm, £10 to £15. Tel: 020 8985 2424. Rail: Hackney Central

Shooting Shakespeare