Gorgeous Torture presents Hamstrung, a soul-searching solo show written and performed by George Rennie and directed by Lisa Millar. The production will run from 11th to 16th June at The Glitch, with performances at 19:00 and an additional matinee at 14:00 on 14th June.
Hamstrung excavates the untold story of Yorick, the deceased court jester and famous skull in Hamlet. George Rennie’s high-spirited, existential ghost story flips Shakespeare’s most performed play on its head, reflecting on comedy, ambition, and the search for a performer’s identity.
Following a critically acclaimed run at Edinburgh Fringe, Hamstrung uncovers the hidden tale of the King’s personal entertainer. The show asks whose stories get to be told and reclaims tragedy for the quirky and queer.
Yorick is waiting in the wings, or perhaps purgatory. After stumbling upon Elsinore through a mysterious door, an ill-fated attempt to reignite Hamlet’s theatrical spark rekindles Yorick’s long-buried passion. This blurs the line between performance and personal truth as he accidentally wreaks havoc on the Danish court.
With audience interaction, heartfelt songs, and light-footed humour, Hamstrung weaves in and out of Shakespeare’s narrative, shedding new light on the events of the original and exposing the precarity and invisibility of history’s forgotten fools.
George Rennie says: “It’s so exciting to be bringing this playful, twisted and beautiful story back to a stage in London after the madness of Edinburgh Fringe. The negative space around Yorick has so much to say about status and identity in the performing arts, and his manic drive to make people laugh at whatever cost captures the existential angst underlying many comic performers. I can’t wait to dazzle and provoke audiences and hope that people feel the full spectrum of emotions with him, from mirth to madness to melancholy.”
Gorgeous Torture produces bloody fantastical theatre, treating classics with an irreverent style to comment on contemporary issues in a heightened and genre-based way. Its founder, George Rennie, is a writer, performer, and theatre-maker whose previous projects include Mating in Captivity (King’s Head Theatre 2019), Up, Up, Up and Away! (Creation Theatre, Mercury Theatre 2020), Spirit Box (Pleasance Islington for London Horror Festival 2021), and Entwined (Omnibus Theatre 2025).
The Glitch is run by VAULT Creative Arts, a multi-award-winning, internationally renowned arts company, and the previous producers of VAULT Festival — London’s largest festival of performing arts. They build meaningful, low-risk opportunities for the UK’s best emerging talent to grow, develop, and make ground-breaking work. They do this by creating exciting, extraordinary cultural events in unexpected locations, breathing new life into these spaces and filling them with creativity.
Listings and ticket information can be found here.
