Shaking My Head at Shakespeare

Last evening Krista and I attended a performance at The Frazier International Museum of History. The performance takes a comedi look at the entire body of writing that Shakespeare has done. "The Complete Works of Shakespeare, Abridged," as it was called, is a three man show in which the actors, recognizing they are actors performing a show, attempt to present a brief survey of the entire body of work that Shakespeare wrote. It was a clever show, hilarious at points, and very postmodern (aware of itself as a play. Very MacBeth like in that it was a play within a play.) There were moments of sheer hilarity, fun, and just plain entertainment. In my estimation it was a brilliant idea to take a stab at something so grand. As the three actors attempt to cover all the works of Shakespeare they do so in a very unique way. Their "reverant irreverance" brought forth some clever artistic expressions of the plays of Shakespeare. So all the comedies were done as one, "The Love Boat Goes to Verona". The histories were done as a football game in which the crown (the football) passes from one monarch to the next in the order of Shakespeare's plays. The tragadies, consuming most of the time, began with Romeo and Juliet (acted out with three men, which took on some fun itself) and concluded with a speedy, then backwards, performance of Hamlet. It was a fun evening.

But all of that makes me sad to say these next few words. I cannot recommend it to you. Why? Simply put the show contained far more crude, and filthy "humor" than I am comfortable with. Now one must allow for some, as Shakespeare's plays themselves deal with incest, lust, death, be-headings, and the like. Yet Shakespeare's way of dealing with them was not to indulge the flesh and glorify sin, which unfortunately was the aim of the writers in this production. Four or five "jokes" were strongly sexual (including two displays in which a character, dressed as a woman, pretends to masturbate on stage). Others jokes mocked morality, religion, and abortion. It was rather sad, I must say. Here I had hoped for a nice evening with my wife enjoying the classic works of Shakespeare in a fun new light, and found myself having to shake my head more than I would have liked. A cleaner version of this show would have revealed the great talent of the writers and actors, it would have made for a more interesting show in which the lowest level humour was not attained, and would have allowed me to encourage all to see it. But as it stands "The Complete Works of Shakespeare, Abridged" is just too filthy to recommend. I suppose I am not really shaking my head at Shakespeare, then, but at this modern interpretation of the genius playwrite.