Drunk Shakespeare
The Practical Details
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The Show
The Theatre
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Stage Door
Full guide →When to go. Head straight out at curtain call. Two-show days are the worst bet at both performances — the cast rests through the matinee and is spent by the evening. A Sunday matinee is the best single bet, because it is a one-show day. In bad weather the barricades sometimes never go up at all.
Who comes out. Anywhere from nobody to most of the cast. Nobody can tell you in advance which three — not us, not the theatre. Treat any list that claims otherwise with suspicion.
What to bring. Tonight’s Playbill and a fine-tip Sharpie, held open to the page you want signed. Ask before you photograph anyone, and keep the pavement clear — it is a working door, not a red carpet.
Where to Buy Tickets
The Lowdown
Five actors. One bottle of whiskey. Zero chance the night goes according to plan.
Drunk Shakespeare has been running in Midtown since 2014, and the premise has never needed a rewrite: one cast member takes five shots of whiskey, then attempts to perform a Shakespeare play while four sober colleagues scramble to keep the plot upright. Whether they pull it off is very much up for grabs, which is the whole point.
The current rotation is Romeo & Juliet, staged inside The Ruby Theatre — a red-velvet, book-lined room on West 39th Street where the crowd sits close enough to see exactly how the evening is going. Audience members get pulled in. Bribery is encouraged. Somebody usually ends up on a throne.
It runs about 90 minutes with no intermission, it is 21+ with photo ID at the door, and it sells out regularly, so booking ahead beats wandering by. If you ever sat through a school-mandated Shakespeare and thought it needed fewer footnotes and more chaos, this is that show. Bring friends. Do not bring your boss.
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Our full verdict on Drunk Shakespeare is coming soon. Reader lottery reports below have the on-the-ground intel in the meantime.
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