Tangled Web is an original one act play written for the Mendip Players Youth.

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Think Shakespeare meets Lost! A group of Shakespearean characters are stranded on an island (we never find out how) and through their encounters with each other, discover their strengths and flaws.

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The Mendip Players Youth actors were tasked to find a character from any Shakespeare play to whom they related in some way. This would then be their character in Tangled Web.

The characters’ original story arcs have been intertwined into this new story as much as possible and their original characteristics have been kept. Of course, there would not have been this cross over of characters in Shakespeare’s actual works although there are definite similarities in some of their traits. For example, in Tangled Web, Viola dresses as a man to prove equality whereas in their original plays, it was Portia who did this. In Viola’s play, she dresses as a man to get a job!

Click here for brief summaries of the characters and the plays in which they first appeared. As to why they are all now stranded on an island – who knows!