Renaissance Rep Co. packs all of Shakespeare’s plays into 2 hilarious performances

Release Date: 4/6/2005. Expired: 5/19/2005

Sitting through all 37 of William Shakespeare’s plays sounds like a daunting task for even the most devoted theatre patron. But condensing all of the plays into less than 90 minutes and mixing in a little Monty Python and a dash of Three Stooges creates an entirely different attraction.

The Renaissance Repertory Theatre Company presents The Compleat Works of Wllm Shkspr (abridged) in two public performances May 2 and 19.

The Monday, May 2, performance is part of The Renaissance Center’s Senior Days activities and tickets are $5 for patrons 55 and over. The play is presented in the center’s Performance Hall at 1 p.m.

The Thursday, May 19, performance is a one-time Lunch Matinee and tickets are $17, which includes a lunch buffet, drink, dessert and the play presented in the Gaslight Dinner Theatre. The buffet opens at 12 p.m. and the play begins at 1 p.m. Seating is limited and reservations are required by noon May 18.

Directed by Hal Partlow, managing director of the Renaissance Repertory Theatre Company, The Compleat Works of Wllm Shkspr (abridged) is a mix of pratfalls, puns, willful misreadings and clean-cut ribaldry that packs everything and everyone from Romeo to Caesar to MacBeth to Hamlet into one show.

The show was written by Adam Long, Daniel A. Singer and Jess Winfield, who founded the Reduced Shakespeare Company. In 1981, the trio began presenting a 20-minute version of Hamlet at Renaissance Faires in California. To keep audiences’ attention, they developed a fast, funny and physical style that resembled improvised street performances.

A couple of years later they expanded the show by adding an abbreviated version of Romeo and Juliet, with the three actors playing all the roles, both male and female.

The first hour-long version of the show debuted in 1987 and the following year it made its first U.S. tour as a full-length production. In 1991, 10 years after the first performance of the shortened Hamlet, the Reduced Shakespeare Company became a full-time production company and took The Compleat Works of Wllm Shkspr (abridged) on its first tour of the United Kingdom.

The first half of the play includes a hilarious abbreviated version of Romeo and Juliet, condenses 16 comedies into one play, presents a shortened Macbeth in outrageously bad Scottish brogues and then combines all the history plays into a football game with the crown as the ball.

The second half of the play is devoted entirely to Hamlet, the play that originated the Reduced Shakespeare Company. The actors present an abbreviated Hamlet, then a shorter and faster version followed by an even shorter and faster version before finally presenting the play again backwards.

“This is Shakespeare for people who think they don’t like Shakespeare,” Partlow said. “This play takes the culturally revered works of the great Bard and mixes them up into a comedic soup where all the individual ingredients are recognizable but you have no idea what the finished product will taste like.”

Ryan Hunt, Michael Knight and Jason Richards play all the roles in all 37 plays with a few cameo appearances by various stunt professionals, hired especially for this production.

For more information on either performance of The Compleat Works of Wllm Shkspr (abridged), call (615)740-5600. To purchase tickets, call (615)740-5570.

The Renaissance Center is an arts and technology education and performing arts center at 855 Highway 46 South in Dickson, just 35 miles west of Nashville on Interstate 40 at exit 172.

Visit the Theatre page for more about community and professional theatre.

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