Long story short…
The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (Abridged)
By Jess Winfield, Adam Long and Daniel Singer
Directed by Neal Freeman
Gallery Players
Equity showcase (closed)
Review by Charles Battersby
The British production
of Complete Works… recently closed its nine-year run at the Criterion
Theatre in London. An impressive run for a Shakespeare parody in England. In Complete
Works…, three actors really do perform the complete works of Shakespeare
(including the sonnets), albeit in a highly abbreviated form. Despite what the
concept implies, “Complete Works…” requires no deep knowledge of Shakespeare to
appreciate it (though a moderate amount would help).
How do they do 37 plays
in 90 minutes? Well, they cheat a little; the entire history cycle is told
straight through, and all of the comedies are cunningly amalgamized into a
single play about multiple sets of cross-dressing, identical twins, and a pair
of Dukes.
The tragedies get more
stage time, since it’s more fun to spoof something serious. The show starts out
with a fairly lengthy Romeo and Juliet parody, then deals with Titus
and The Scottish Play at length too. Hamlet, of course, is given
a deeper degree of analysis, and the entire second act of the show is devoted
to the Melancholy Dane.
The project originally
began as a 20-minute version of Hamlet, augmented later with a similar Romeo
and Juliet. These two scenes are light-years ahead of the rest of the show,
which was slowly developed later. There’s a considerable amount of audience
interaction, which seems like a cheap way to pad the show up to its 90-minute
running time. One sprawling scene brings an audience member onstage to play
Ophelia, while the rest of the audience screams out lines from Hamlet, while
doing “The Wave.” All of which takes around 10 minutes, just for the payoff of
one gag about Ophelia being a complex character.
It has to be pointed
out that even the weaker parts of the show are still funny. There’s some
genuinely clever material here, but it has a lingering sense that it all should be funnier, and could be funnier overall if the padding
were kept to a minimum (or even cut out).
The three actors here
were given a tough task, but they did an admirable job. Patrick Toon often played the intellectual, the leader of the gang
so to speak, and frequently found himself alone on stage, feigning nervousness
convincingly. Rob Seitelman was the
corpulent cross-dresser whose recurring gags involved screeching in a falsetto,
pretending to vomit on the audience, and running, screaming from the theatre
when faced with the challenge of performing in Hamlet. Alex Domeyko, who eventually played Hamlet, spent the show vibrating with
energy as though in the midst of an improv show, prepared to fire in any
direction. The three different types of performance didn’t entirely mesh
together, though -- again, creating a feeling that it should have been even
funnier than it is.
Director Neal Freeman
did bring out the fun of this show, but might be held responsible for the fact
it seemed to be running in second gear. There was a tremendous amount of energy
present, but it was often unfocused. The constant physical comedy worked, but
men in drag and people running around screaming tend to get laughs regardless.
Despite everything said here, Complete Works… is still a very funny show, and an excellent primer for people who’d like to learn more about Shakespeare but don’t want to sit through the 117 hours it would normally take to see his complete works, unabridged.
Writing: 2
Directing: 1
Acting: 1
Set: 1
Costumes: 1
Lighting/Sound: 1
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Copyright 2005 Charles Battersby