Reviews

The Complete Works of William Shakespeare Abridged: Revised (tour – Norwich Playhouse)

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14 April 2013

It’s difficult to know
where to start – let alone finish – when attempting to assess
The Complete Works of William Shakespeare Abridged: Revised. The three creator-performers – Adam Long,
Daniel Singer and Jess Winfield – whirl us through the canon as
promised with the audience laughing its collective head off and
struggling gamely to keep up.

It all takes place in
front of a curtain which (more or less) shows an Elizabethan
playhouse. The three performers are masters of the quick costume
change as a (comparatively) leisurely whisk through Romeo
and Juliet – which is book-ended for the second half of
the performance by Hamlet. This is succeeded by all
the history (not forgetting King John and “the
king in the car park”) and Roman plays. Of course, there’s also
a hilarious mish-mash of the comedies, the part-authored plays and
even the sonnets.

One highlight is
Othello done in rap style. But it’s the
Hamlet which is the true show-stopper, with
hapless audience members inveigled onto the stage as Freudian and a
whole host of other interpretations are tried-out. The
play-within-a-play done with glove puppets in a sort of Punch &
Judy booth is a particular delight, as is the corpse-scattered last
scene.