Theatre 1331 Opinion Paper #5

Professor Claremarie Verheyen

Roundabout Romp

On Saturday in San Antonio I watched “The Complete Works of William Shakespeare

(Abridged!)”. The play’s low aesthetic distance was its most striking feature; it featured audience
participation from - signs telling the audience to applaud to one of the actors being replaced by an
audience member during their Hamlet performance. The thrust stage arrangement with the actors being
only feet away from the audience complemented the use of aesthetic distance. The anachronisms were
also used to great comedic effect, with the highlight of these being King Lear being performed as a
football game. The play was very nonrealistic, as to be expected with a comedy like this where Ophelia’s
drowning is represented by an actor splashing a cup of water on his face.

The play was not only an affectionate parody of Shakespeare’s work; it also poked fun at acting.
When the audience member performs her part after being called to the stage, the actor who “quit” says
her performance is falling flat because she lacks the subtext. This same actor also directed and produced
the production. I believe he was successful in his presentation of the play, adapting elements of
Shakespeare’s body of work into a quickly paced and unified romp.

The play was episodic to the point of tautology, for it consisted of abridged versions of thirty-
seven of Shakespeare’s plays and their plots. The characters represented were given a dominant trait
consistent with their behaviors in their own plays, in one case, Hamlet was portrayed as an eyeliner
wearing emo. These extreme elements of character were used to great comedic effect. The scenery of
the play was minimalistic, there was only a wall in the center of the stage the actors used to change
costumes. I believe this unrealistic scenery served the production well because the actors did not have
to spend time moving set pieces, maintaining the rapid pace of the play. The only lighting effect in the
play was when one of the actors tripped over the lighting system’s power cable, turning off all of the
lights and prompting another actor to announce that it is now nighttime. The costumes were minimal
because they must be able to be removed quickly in order to keep up with the pace of the play, so they
were mainly there to portray the setting of the play and for character identification. I believe they met
the performers’ needs very well because the actors were able to swap costumes in seconds. These
technical features of the play served the production very well and complemented the quick rhythm and
pace of the script.