The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (Revised) (Again) (Adam Long, Daniel Singer, Jess Winfield)
Hey! This is an odd script to take a look at for a few reasons:
It’s fairly well-known, as far as contemporary works are concerned
I have a lot of experience with past versions of the show.
Unlike other plays I actually am directing and designing this show fairly soon, so this information and analysis isn’t just theoretical.
Of course The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (Abridged) is a frequently produced show for a reason: easy to sell tickets to, easy to get the audience onboard for, relatively small cast, although with deceptively high production needs (mostly props.)
For those who are unfamiliar, there’s a whole PBS filmed version of it to watch, it’s a franchise, and it’s a silly show born of Renfaire performances to do a fast, funny, physical version of the Shakespeare canon in two breezy acts.
Three actors hewing close to classic archetypes (pretentious academic, dumb fellow, common joe) band together to make Shakespeare relevant and fun! I’ve been watching this show and things from the company since I was in high school, so I was mostly looking at how things are on the page and the new revisions that 2022 brought.
Which were considerable, a number of bits have been updated, some material has been excised (notably the Othello rap,) and a lot of cheap pops have been put in to appeal to the sorts of folk we expect to populate an audience.
Overall the show moves just as fast and is (hopefully) just as funny as it ever was, but does require a lot of commitment from the actors to not pull punches with the cornier aspects of the show.
As a Designer
So the tricky thing here is I have to actually do this, and I have to do it in a particular place, with a particular budget, in a particular amount of time (not much, as it turns out.)
Luckily, the play has a low-budget schtick, unfortunately, low-budget takes a lot more to pull off than you may think.
After reading the script my original concept (of the actors literally putting everything up as they do the show) is unlikely to fly: there just isn’t the room. Because of the small cast I want to make sure to keep the stage small and accessible, so they can cross it more easily.
I’m toying with shadow puppets or projection being a big part of the show, but have to read it over again.
Suffice to say, even a small show takes an absurd amount of preparation.
As a Writer
Ever since I brazenly decided to keep trying to put on shows I find myself in a love/hate relationship with expectation. These guys started a whole show, with their own schtick, of reducing complicated literary concepts into comedies. I’m sure as writers they occasionally want to play with other ideas, but the market expects a particular thing from them.
More recently, the fellows behind Play That Goes Wrong have lodged themselves firmly in the same boat: they do shows that a variety of technical, literary, and acting failures. They do other things (Groan Ups being the one I’m most familiar with,) but they hardly get the same attention.
It’s not a thing I like, even as I can tell that it is very useful, and worse than that I can’t find the thing I’d make my own even if I wanted to.
