02.18.03
All the Great Books (Abridged)
On Saturday evening I attended the play All the Great Books (Abridged) by The Reduced Shakespeare Company. The Reduced Shakespeare Company is best known for their performance of The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (abridged) in which they cover all 37 of Shakespeare’s plays in 97 minutes. In All the Great Books (abridged), The Reduced Shakespeare Company treats us to coverage of 92 literature classics explained in about an hour and a half… and then recapped in 3 minutes. I was afraid that I would be attending the play without enough background to understand the humor. While I am sure there were many references that flew right over my head I was surprised to find that I have in fact read half of the works covered. The rest are pervasive enough in our culture that the jokes are well understood… and quite funny. All the Great Books is a great piece of theater fluff. You will laugh, you will cry, you will want to have read more of the books so you can get the rest of the jokes.
As a sad postscript to this trip, I learned in the news that afternoon that the ACT has run out of money and may soon be closing its doors. Saturday’s performance may have been the last in what is probably the best theater venue in Seattle.