Take three guys from Trinity, subtract the fourth wall, mix in some audience participation, a liberal amount of fake puking and a few words from the Bard and you have The Complete Works of William Shakespeare Abridged.
The premise of the show is to somehow cram all 37 of Shakespeare’s plays – tragedies, comedies and historical dramas – into a 98-minute performance. The play’s title is something of a misnomer; most of the plays, rather than being summarized, are merely mentioned by name, and maybe have a few lines quoted.
But with highly entertaining, sketch-like performances of Shakespeare football, the Titus Andronicus cooking show (based heavily on the popular Emeril Live! format), and (my personal favorite) an Othello rap, one hardly misses the dramas that aren’t referenced.
The three actors, Chris Lee, Christian Parsons and Devin Upham, carried the production with their enthusiastic performances. Their sense of physical comedy was impressive as they had swordfights, fistfights and somersaulted across the stage. They inhabited their multiple roles well and grasped the inherent humor in actors playing actors.
Lee showed a particular penchant for playing the women’s parts that were solely his domain throughout the show. His Ophelia was a thing of beauty to behold, easily rivalling the great actresses who have taken on the part through the ages. And none of them had to fake throwing up, or wear a she-mullet wig without cracking up.
However, the actors, especially Upham, occasionally flubbed their lines or failed to project or enunciate enough. I was sitting in the fourth row and had trouble hearing all of the Othello rap, for instance.
The second act of the show entirely comprised work on Hamlet. Various versions of the play were performed, including a segment of audience participation which tried to recreate Ophelia’s subconscious by having different groups in the audience shout lines from the play as well as a more modern spin: “Cut the crap, Hamlet, my biological clock is ticking and I want to have babies,” accompanied by hip thrusts.
An abridged version of Hamlet was then performed three times, once highly sped up and once backwards. The murder-filled ending of the play involved more fake puking – a gag that was perhaps overused, yet that remained funny.
The play, rather than any sort of real introduction to the works of the Bard, was instead more of an opportunity to see three Trin guys run around onstage and assault each other with sabres (regular and light). But damn, was it entertaining.
