Times-Dispatch: "Compleat Works" is "loaded with laughs"

From the Richmond Times-Dispatch:

Brevity is the soul of this troupe's wit

Saturday, Jun 14, 2008 - 12:08 AM Updated: 12:14 PM

By SUSAN HAUBENSTOCK

SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT

You might call it an amuse bouche. It's amusing, all right, and it's a little warm-up to Richmond Shakespeare's summer festival at Agecroft Hall.

It's "The Compleat Works of Wllm Shkspr (Abridged)," and it's loaded with laughs.

The 1987 comedy careens through the entire Shakespeare canon in an irreverent couple of hours, dismissing comedies and histories left and right to concentrate on the tragedies. Oh, and the sonnets are covered by having the audience pass around an index card.

Adam Long, Jess Borgeson and Daniel Singer wrote this hodgepodge, and though it may be a little dated (the rap version of "Othello" is very old-school), it's still hilarious. Three actors play themselves and most of the characters in the plays, with room left for improvisation and local color.

Matthew E. Ellis directs this production, with Jeffry Clevenger, LaSean Pierre Greene and David Janosik as the misguided actors who attempt this feat. Precise timing is as important for the combat scenes as for the jokes, and Ellis provides a good sense of fun and relentless pacing.

Each actor brings something special, too. Greene is the affable emcee, entertaining with yo-yo tricks before and after intermission, in addition to taking on roles ranging from the Nurse in "Romeo and Juliet" to Polonius in "Hamlet."

Clevenger is sort of in charge, wowing the audience with accents that range from a thick Scottish brogue for "Macbeth" to Laurence Olivier British.

And Janosik is the wild man who plays most of the girls in a motley assortment of wigs, then stuns with a low-key but moving rendition of the "What a piece of work is a man" soliloquy from "Hamlet." And he does a mean Christopher Walken, too.

Jennifer L. Dryden's costumes and James David White's lighting contribute much to the staging, and an array of silly props appears, from puppets to swords to the requisite asp for "Antony and Cleopatra."

There's a Julia Child-style cooking-show version of "Titus Andronicus" and a football version of the history plays.

The most extensive sendup is given to "Hamlet," which is done fast, faster and finally backward. "We don't have to do it justice," Clevenger reminds his colleagues; "we just have to do it."