The Complete Works Of William Shakespeare (Abridged) APA Drama Theatre October 5 It sounds like a student's dream show: all 37 of William Shakespeare's plays in 97 minutes. So you can forget not understanding the plot, or falling asleep during the soliloquies.
You can also forget about all those boring bits and sustained metaphors, even - if you can - Gwyneth Paltrow and Leonardo diCaprio.
The Reduced Shakespeare Company - and, yes, they do shorten that to RSC - simply doesn't have time for all that tosh.
Arky Michael, Russell Fletcher and Sean O'Shea, the three men doing Shakespeare irreverently on a strict diet of baked beans (high energy, frantic costume changes, lots of flatulence), have thrown out the turgid bits, but kept the sex and violence, all that lovely treachery, poison and swordplay.
Shakespeare wrote for the masses, and he would probably be writing for television if he were alive today. This was certainly Shakespeare for the MTV generation.
Michael, Fletcher and O'Shea gave us Titus Andronicus as a galloping gourmet, Othello in rap and all 16 comedies in one quick sequence, 'because the plots are pretty much the same'.