American theatre critic Matt Wolf explores reducing Shakespeare in the 21st Century ahead of a new version of classic West End show The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (abridged), which arrives at Bristol Old Vic this month.
It’s been 45 years since Adam Long and his partners first hit upon the idea of a 20-minute Hamlet to be performed at Shakespearean-themed Renaissance Faires in his native California. Little did Long and his two co-writers, Daniel Singer and Jess Winfield, realise at the time that they were planting the seed for what would become the Reduced Shakespeare Company. That singularly cheeky – and smart – theatrical venture is resurfacing anew this year in an entirely fresh production that will tour to 30 UK venues, starting in the Cotswolds town of Chipping Norton.
Directed and co-written by Long, The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (abridged) furthers the theatrical compression that is the stock-in-trade of this RSC (not be confused with that other troupe with the same initials – the Royal Shakespeare Company). But in the hands of a new trio of performers – Efé Agwele, Woogie Jung, and Tom Pavey – this brainstorming of the Bard is being fashioned anew.
“The overall goal of doing the complete works is still there – 37 plays and 154 sonnets all for the price of one ticket; the audience is going to get their money’s worth.” So says Long, who some while ago settled in the UK and has an English wife and two grown-up children.
But whereas he performed in the show back in the day, Long is pleased to have a new generation of talent take charge onstage: indeed, he notes with astonishment that more than 2400 people applied to fill these three roles (plus a walking cover). “One of the reasons the show works so well is that it has always emanated from the personalities of the actors onstage. We’re excited about the actors we’ve got, who are incredibly intelligent and incredibly funny.”
It falls to Agwele, an Anglo-Nigerian graduate of Mountview, to perform Hamlet backwards – one of this production’s defining set pieces – but Jung and Pavey are equally important to a show that leaves no Shakespearean stone unturned. There’s a micro-condensed Othello scored to a ukulele, and a carnage-filled Titus Andronicus done as a YouTube cooking tutorial. The history plays become a manic football game with a crown passed from one king to the next (King Lear is disqualified for being fictional), and spells, shipwrecks, and rings signal the charmed landscape of the comedies.
“I didn’t want this to be an exercise in nostalgia,” notes Long, a onetime political activist who seems astonished even now at the RSC’s nine year, 3,744-performance West End run, which finished in 2005. (Their work has also been seen in more than 20 countries.) The good thing is that his show comes steeped in a love for the theatre that knows no limits. “I just love the whole artistry of theatre – the ritual of it, the celebration of it.” Conjoin that passion with one for Shakespeare and you’ve moved towards the timeless. “People just love Shakespeare’s stories,” says Long, “and they always will.”
The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (abridged) is at Bristol Old Vic from 24-28 March. Tickets via bristololdvic.org.uk
