Cast of "The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (Abridged)"

HK Magazine: Is this production the first for either of you?
Dan Saski: I did the show two or three years ago, performing in a different role than I am now. And Tiger has been doing this show for, what—27 years or so?
Tiger Reel: It feels that way. I’ve been doing it in some form or another since 1992, and [Reduced Shakespeare Company head] Austin Tichenor tells me that I am one of two people on the planet who has played all three roles.

HK: How do you keep the material and performance fresh on a show with such a long history?
DS: [The original creators] revised the show in 2001 once it had hit 20 years on stage, which made the Comedies section entirely different. But more importantly, the show is always evolving. With the improv and audience interaction elements, sometimes you’ll be doing a show and someone will ad lib something and we all go, “Woah… we’re going to have to do that every night now, because it was so funny.” I did the show just two years ago, and when I received the script for this tour, it was a revision of a revision. It’s great—it keeps us on our toes.

HK: Is there a lessened level of enjoyment for people who aren’t very familiar with Shakespeare?
TR: I don’t think so. You don’t really need to know the story of King Arthur to enjoy “Monty Python and the Holy Grail,” because the jokes are solid. The same thing applies here. There might be little in-jokes here and there, but at the end of the day, a guy running around in a dress is funny to everybody with a sense of humor, regardless of whether they love Shakespeare.
DS: It’s a very accessible take, and some of the things we make light of will hopefully encourage people to get more into Shakespeare. Like how most of his comedies follow the same formula: what’s the one with the ship wreck, the identical twins, mistaken identity and cross-dressing? Oh—all of them. We do a bit where we take all 16 comedies and write one in its place, that’s five minutes long. For the people who know the plays they can laugh at the references, but everyone else will laugh at this story we’ve put together from Shakespeare’s works. And then they might Google it.

HK: What explains the show’s unprecedented staying power with audiences around the globe?
TR: It’s Shakespeare. Everybody was forced to read him in school. Everybody.
DS: He’s the greatest playwright of all time because his subjects still hold true today. I direct a lot of kids’ productions of “Romeo and Juliet” back in the States, and I love doing it because I feel like that story is so accessible. I say to the kids: “This guy and this girl are in love, and their families don’t like each other. What does that look like today?”
TR: There was a production in Israel, where two companies—one Israeli and one Palestinian—came together, with the Israelis playing the Montagues and the Palestinians playing the Capulets. Amazing—there are always things in Shakespeare that people can relate to.

HK: You’ve also worked on proper Shakespeare productions. Do you prefer the comedies or tragedies?
TR: As we say in the show, the comedies aren’t nearly as funny as the tragedies. Seriously. Hamlet is one of the funniest characters ever written. I just directed “Merchant of Venice” and that is considered one of the comedies, but if you describe that plot to anyone, they’re like, “What? The whole town is anti-Semitic!” That’s a comedy that really turned me off at first with its mean-spirited nature, but I came around on it. I think its mean-spiritedness is its selling point; it’s a dark view of humanity and he made a comedy out of it.

HK: Do you have a favorite play?
TR: That’s hard. What’s cool about Shakespeare is that as you get older, your tastes change. You might have loved “Comedy of Errors” when you were 13, but it’s really just a sitcom. At the same time, you didn’t understand “Hamlet” at 13, but as you get older you begin to see why everyone thinks it’s the greatest play ever.