Night at the Theater: The Complete Works of William Shakespeare

Donna and I attended a performance at Angelo Civic Theater Friday night. I was a bit cautious about this particular play, The Complete Works of William Shakespeare by Adam Long, Daniel Singer, and Jess Winfield. Not everyone likes Shakespeare. I enjoy reading the tragedies and histories of Shakespeare, but watching a performance is yet another thing.

But we truly enjoyed the play. It parodies 37 plays by Shakespeare in 97 minutes, and uses only 3 actors, who play themselves rather than single characters in the plays. They often talk directly to the audience, and there is some audience participation as well. Numerous references to modern culture appear throughout the play, and the characters often discuss how to best present a play. For example, they stumble at first as to how to deal with Othello, whose central character is a Moor. Since all three actors are Caucasian, they finally decide to rap the play.

The performance begins with a lengthy presentation of Romeo and Juliet. They then quickly rush through numerous plays and end the performance with an equally lengthy presentation of Hamlet. They close the play by repeating their interpretation of Hamlet much more quickly. To top things off, they close by repeating their quick interpretation of Hamlet in reverse.

All three actors did a very good job. This is a physically challenging play for an actor. I'm sure all three of them were exhausted by the end of their performance. I thought the play itself was clever and witty. It's as if the actors were making the play up as they progressed through the evening.

The only flaw of the night was the loud-mouthed audience member behind us who had exceedingly loud, exaggerated laughs. I recognized the "gentleman" as one of the regular performers in many Civic Theater plays. At first I thought he might be a "plant" in the audience to help along any audience participation. After a while, I realized that he was simply obnoxious.