The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (abridged) [revised]

The Reduced Shakespeare Company’s madcap medley of Shakespeare’s plays has once again appeared in the fair city of Verona [strike that: Canberra! – Ed] Canberra, with Canberra Repertory bravely challenging the Bard to cut all the excess verbiage and condense his entire oeuvre to its most essential 97 minutes.  To make the challenge more interesting, after declaiming the oeuvre’s inclusion of no fewer than 1122 characters, the script demands that the complete “reduced” collection of 37 plays be performed by just three actors.

That’s quite a challenge, and the play’s authors give over less than a minute to most of the plays; indeed, the three parts of Henry VI get a fraction of a minute between them, and The Merchant of Venice struck out for a ducat.

The players’ roles were taken by Callum Doherty, Alex McPherson, and Ryan Street.  They worked some marvellous surprises together, with split-second timing and agile entrances and exits in near-perfect darkness.

Much of the first half-hour went to an abridged version of Romeo and Juliet, of which a highlight was Ryan Street’s flying costume changes as he alternated between the characters of Mercutio, Juliet, and the priest.  And much of the final half-hour went to the most amusing versions of Hamlet you’re likely to encounter.   But everybody who is anybody in the plays seems to get a mention.

Physical comedy was a strong point, with Street even seamlessly creating a laugh from an unintended trip; and the actors’ involvement of and occasional victimisation of the audience (and of currently prominent political figures) worked well in creating engagement.

Callum Doherty’s surprising agility, suggesting circus training, and natural youthful exuberance in his characters added surprising contrast to the more “serious” characters, and Alex McPherson’s confident articulation helped keep an otherwise wild performance somewhat grounded.  The entire production, though, was coordinated, precise, controlled, and unpredictable: a good deal of effortless fun.

John P. Harvey.

Image: Callum Doherty, Alex McPherson, and Ryan Street, in The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (abridged) [revised].  Photographer: Karina Hudson.