The Complete Works ....

of William Shakespeare (Abridged).

As promised, here is my quick review of this play we saw in Sunnyvale (at the California Theatre Center (CTC)). The word I would use to describe this one is "Hysterical". Once again this play is done so well that it is fall-out-of-your-chair funny. The whole audience, old and young was laughing constantly. And even during the intermission people couldn't stop laughing. The show was such a treat.

I've seen this show twice now. Once 2 years ago in Milpitas, and then once more this weekend. The 1st performance was done by a company who had very little money and therefore, not much of a set. The 3 actors who performed all the parts of all the Shakespearean plays had to seriously compensate for the lack of props. They were like "actors on crack!" It was amazing. They acted, ran about the stage, dragged things in from back stage (a ladder served as Juliet's balcony, they had a blow up godzilla for....well I should let you guess, folding chairs served as thrones). I couldn't believe all the energy they had, and the acting was so engaging you never noticed that they were compensating for so much.

This performance had much more money behind it. The set was wonderful, and the actors were super. It had a completely different flavor than the last one, and it was still amazing. The actors seem to have a lot of liberty to add things into the performances as they seem fit. So each performance has some different jokes and different uses of props.

For instance, in the Milpitas performance, one of the guys exclaimed incessantly "I am slain!" Well, you know, in every single Shakespeare play someone dies, so this actor fell to the ground in a heap in so many creative, hysterical ways, we can't stop quoting him even today...2 years later. In the Sunnyvale performance, one of the actors exclaimed, "I don't want to perform boring vomitless Shakespeare!" So every time he played a woman, some poor audience member would have a Shakespearean actor standing above them pretented to....well....you get the idea. If you see this performance don't sit in the first row or on the sides of the rows.

Oh yes, and Dave got pulled onto the stage to perform as Ophelia's "ID" (you know, part of the triad of the Id, Ego, and Super Ego). He ran back and forth across the stage flailing his arms as the audience chanted at poor Ophelia. Now that was different!

The moral of the story.....see this play, no matter where you get to see it. It seems that each different performance is exciting and new and makes you laugh so hard you cry. And when you see it, let me know how you liked it.