I am a Shakespeare actor and director, and I find it insane that they give students plays to read. Reading a play is a skill unto itself. Even more so for an Elizabethan play.
The actors are doing so much interpretation work for you. It is an enormous effort. Let them.
There is much value in reading Shakespeare, but you have to learn how, and you won't get there just by having an unabridged text thrown at you.
Same. I've done I can't even count how many shows, and I don't particularly like reading plays. It's effort - usually worth it, but never not work.
By the way, I spent the first two or three years of my professional career performing school-tour Shakespeare. That was a joy. Hard graft: sometimes three shows in a day, along with loading and unloading the van in between, but my goodness it was rewarding. Great training, too. We'd do a show in the morning for twenty people in a library, and then in the afternoon in a 2,000 seat auditorium. You had to learn quickly how to modulate your performance, and what choices land with what kinds of audience.
I haven't seen this, but going by the linked summary, I'd say 'no'. I'm sure it's very clever, but pastiches depend upon familiarity with the source material to work. They also - this is why they're fun! - change the source in material ways, as it seems this does.
Students need to experience plays the way they're meant to be experienced: as plays. Live events, with human interaction at their heart. Anything else is... Missing the point.
The actors are doing so much interpretation work for you. It is an enormous effort. Let them.
There is much value in reading Shakespeare, but you have to learn how, and you won't get there just by having an unabridged text thrown at you.