Thursday Theatre Thoughts: Review of "The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (abridged)"

Gabrielle Hammond & Kerri Hammond

gabsbitesizeblogs@gmail.com

keskreates@gmail.com

Me and mum had a perfectly marvellous evening out watching "The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (abridged)" at the New Wolsey Theatre on Tuesday. I wanted to give a brief review of it and maybe convince you to buy last minute tickets (it's on in Ipswich until Saturday!).

A 3-man only show obviously meant we were in for a humorous show, with them all playing multiple characters, sometimes with only a couple of seconds to get changed, or even multi-roling at the same time. We had actors Woogie Jung and Tom Pavey, Efé Agwele was not there so instead we had understudy Kiran Raywilliams (you wouldn't have known). All three were great in their own ways and bought something different to the show.

It would always be a challenge to do the plethora of all 37 of Shakespeare's masterous plays in one sitting and do them justice so comedy had to be involved. Shakespeare's plays are mainly classified into four distinct categories; tragedies, comedies, histories and the "problem plays"/apocrypha.

They did the comedies in one little skit type performance (as they are all very similar) and all the histories as a football match as well as a few others in different ways including a cooking tutorial style. Hamlet and Romeo & Juliet were done more thoroughly but on the caveat still with the ethos of the show being much quicker than usual. These two plays are arguably the most well-known so it was expected that they would be explored more compared to others.

There was an audience participation part as well which was highly humorous and enjoyable. With two members of the audience getting on stage playing certain characters in Hamlet, and the whole audience joining in too.

I can't give too much more away; I don't want to spoil it if you decide to go and watch it in Ipswich (or it is on tour around the UK too). But expect chaos, laughter and Hamlet being acted backwards in less than 10 seconds!

Kerri's little own review:

Laughed so hard it was so enjoyable! I think schools should definitely take students to watch it, it is a great way to get students into Shakespeare through the humour and fun. The three actors worked incredibly hard and it wouldn't have been as funny with a larger cast. I was exhausted just watching them! The audience participation was particularly enjoyable and amusing. I also learnt what Hamlet is actually about even though they did it very quickly and even backwards! We had the understudy and couldn't imagine it being any better with the "real" one.