Style Weekly: " 'Compleat Works' strips the Bard down to his funny bone"

From Style Weekly:

Broad Comedy
Silliness is sublime in Richmond Shakespeare’s "Compleat Works."
by David Timberline

The best thing about “The Compleat Works of Wilm Shkspr (Abridged),” the giddily antic production kicking off this summer’s Richmond Shakespeare Festival, is that it takes nothing seriously, including its own concept. While the show purports to present all of the Bard’s plays in a scant two hours, it condenses all of the comedies into a single skit called “The Love Boat Goes to Verona,” tosses off the histories in a pantomime football game, and skips the tragedy “Coriolanus” entirely (the “anus” part proving too scandalous for one cast member).

But the remaining plays (mostly the tragedies) provide ample grist for comic mayhem, at least in the capable hands of this production’s three-man cast. Longtime Richmond favorite Jeffry Clevenger sets the irreverent tone, breezing through the gory “Titus Andronicus” (performed as a cooking show) and infusing “Hamlet” with hilariously overwrought diction.

He bickers with adolescent humor specialist David Janosik, who can’t seem to end a play without vomiting. LaSean Pierre Greene is the affable emcee of the evening, though his cohorts’ conflicts eventually reduce him to performing yo-yo tricks (quite well!) to fill dead time. You can tell these guys are good because they even manage to pull off an extended crowd-participation bit without completely killing the show’s momentum.

Amidst all the silliness, there’s actually real knowledge being served up (do you know what Shakespeare’s Apocrypha is? I didn’t) and some excellent acting on display (Janosik’s second-act soliloquy is splendid). Jennifer Dryden’s costumes — rife with Converse tennis shoes and silly hats — enhance every scene. “Compleat Works” strips the Bard down to his funny bone, with exceedingly entertaining results.