Reduced Shakespeare Unveils New Musical
Date: 6 August 1999
The Reduced Shakespeare Company, whose hit The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (abridged) is now in its fourth year in the West End, will premiere its first ever musical this weekend at the Edinburgh Fringe, prior to a national tour. The Complete Millennium Musical opens Saturday, 7 August at Edinburgh's Assembly Rooms where it continues until 30 August 1999.
Reed Martin, Austin Tichenor and Dee Ryan, fresh from a season at the Kennedy Center in Washington DC, whizz through a thousand years of history in a hundred minutes, from the Dark Ages to the Information Age, from Beowulf to Baywatch.
The alternative RSC was originally formed in California in 1981 where its members performed Hamlet to anyone who passed by on the streets of San Francisco. The British base for the company is at the West End's Criterion Theatre where The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (abridged) and The Complete History of America (Abridged) perform in repertory. The former is now the West End's longest running comedy.
In The Complete Works..., which toured last year to more than 75 towns across the UK, all 37 of the bard's works are condensed into just 97 minutes. An earlier tour of another Reduced Shakespeare production, The Bible: The Complete Word of God (abridged), which also ran in the West End, provoked accusations of blasphemy when the company's signature irreverent approach was applied to biblical material.
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