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Bard play is a bomb
THE COMPLETE SHAKESPEARE
Arts Theatre
UPDATED after 20 years it may be, but references to Desperate Housewives, Google and Victoria Beckham have not helped to refresh the Reduced Shakespeare Company’s play.
The conceit of condensing the Bard’s works into a 97 minute ‘well-formed lump of hilarity’ is still a brilliant one, but an abundance of messing around, puerile humour (how many dick jokes can an audience take?) and forced slapstick have obscured the witty take on Shakespeare’s canon that made this such a smash hit in the first place.
Things begin promisingly with a prog-rock version of Greensleeves, but Michael O’Connor’s bawling, Jackass-inspired performance soon tests the audience’s patience.
It’s a shame because when he takes his foot off the pedal and delivers the Quintessence of Dust speech from Hamlet, the beauty of the source language shines.
The set pieces still hold up well, especially the 16 comedies condensed into a portrayal of Elizabethan theatre’s stock characters, and the histories as a quickfire game of American football.
The second half is taken up with a performance of Hamlet, which is then distilled twice into not one, but two, shorter versions, and then backwards, and proves the show is still intelligent and funny, occasionally thrilling.
And it’s hard not to smile at the interpretative dance of Troilus and Cressida, and English members of the audience will take a guilty pleasure in the portrayal of Macbeth as tartan clad, jimmy wig-sporting, golf club-bearing Scotsman.
But the lack of focus in the performances becomes draining, the audience participation laboured. If it reined in its crudeness and paid more attention to the fine ideas which surface sporadically, this would be a far more enjoyable experience.
Until September 23
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