Theatre and Dance Previews

This show is an irreverent, fast paced romp through all of the Bard’s plays in just 97 minutes. And while Shakespeare may well be turning in his grave, the show has become a cult classic by transforming his entire works into a very funny evening, including Hamlet done forwards, backwards and sideways and all 16 comedies condensed into ‘Four Weddings and a Transvestite’!

One of the three performers in the show, Simon Cole, spoke to us about the show:

You're doing the Complete Works of Shakespeare and you do literally everything don't you?

Simon: Absolutely - it's the complete works so there's 37 plays, and we even cover some of the sonnets and the obscure and lesser plays or sometimes as they're known, the bad plays!

Simon Cole

Can you give us some examples of how the plays are abridged?

Simon: Yes - it's my enviable position that I play all the women in the show so I'm Ophelia, Juliet and Desdemona. The concept is there are three of us and we're on stage for the entire time. Some of us have read some of the plays and others have googled some of the plays etc and so we all try and throw our oar in all at once. So for example the slant that we bring to Othello is that it's a rap, because Othello would probably prefer that because he's sort of down with it.

My concept is that a moor is a place where you tie up boats as opposed to the fact that it used to be a word for a man of African origin so I come on the stage with all of my boats and I give a little rap!

But we bring all sorts of different styles and different ways to it. Our main plays are Romeo and Juliet and Hamlet which is the closer of the evening and we do that forwards, backwards and sideways as well!

I'm sure you've found similarities between all the women that you play as well so can you just do the same character over and over again?!

Simon: Well yes I could! My take on Ophelia is that she has to wear a very nice wig and she just screams a lot and that's actually the kind of concept that I bring to most of the women. If in doubt scream! I've often found as well that a lot of Shakespeare's women, especially the tragic women, are often poisoned so unfortunately I end up vomiting over some of the audience! It's not real vomit obviously - it's just a concept!

The Complete Works company in action

It sounds like the characters are stripped down to their basic levels?

Simon: The very basic! The great thing is that if you know nothing about Shakespeare or if you know everything about Shakespeare you'll find something to take away from each of the plays and obviously we use the text, we just use a slightly abridged format.

So you don't have to be a scholar to enjoy it then?

Simon: Yes - I think that's the best way to describe it. This show started out in the 80s, and you find that for each new set of students that come to Shakespeare, whether they're in elementary or secondary school or even beyond that, there's a new audience that gets hooked and enjoys Shakespeare. That's a great thing, that there's always a new audience out there for the show, but there's also an audience that comes back and we've got a lot of friends out on the road who will always come and see us.

The Complete Works company in action

So is that one of the things that keeps it so popular - new audiences coming to Shakespeare for the first time?

Simon: Absolutely, and we have to keep it topical as well. Titus Andronicus, which is a very gorey, drama has been recently tweaked into a cookery programme because everything you see on telly nowadays is a cookery programme! So we have to adapt as we go along and we also feed in local references and other stuff like quotes from Barak Obama and Hilary Clinton, so hopefully it should be topical and it should be fun and it should keep everyone on their toes because it moves at a kind of juggernaut pace. At the end of the 97 minutes you'll probably be as tired as we are!

You are basically updating the Bard for modern audiences, just like other "normal" productions do, but what do you think Shakespeare would think of it?

Simon: I think he'd love it! Whilst we're irreverent we do also have an absolute undying respect for a man who can write 37 plays that are still with us and still respected and studied over 400 years later. I think there's been talk that he could be rolling in his grave a little bit with the Othello rap and things like that, but I think we do it with such a reverence to the man himself that I think he'd have a little chuckle if maybe not a belly laugh!