Redux Shakespeare Embarks on New UK Tour

The Reduced Shakespeare Company is gearing up for yet-another massive UK-wide tour in 2001. The touring production of the company's long-running hit, The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (abridged), begins on 12 January at the Bull Arts Centre in High Barnet and continues throughout the country until next October. More than 60 venues have so far been confirmed.

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. In Complete Shakespeare, three performers compress the bard's full canon into two hours' playing time, including all sixteen comedies distilled into just one short extract, while the history plays are performed as a ball game.

Complete Shakespeare is the West End's longest running comedy after five years and over 2,000 performances. The show has been seen by more than a million people and is being performed in 12 different languages in as many as 80 different productions around the world at any one time. It continues to play in repertory - with the company's The Complete History of America (abridged) - at London's Criterion Theatre. Complete Shakespeare last toured the UK in 1998/99.

Other Reduced Shakespeare works include The Bible: The Complete Word of God (abridged) and The Complete Millennium Musical (abridged) which toured this year to nearly 100 UK cities.

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