BWW Reviews: Brush Up Your SHAKESPEARE (ABRIDGED) at Oyster Mill Playhouse

William Shakespeare is the preeminent English-speaking writer. He's certainly considered the greatest, and outside of a few such as Charles Dickens, who got paid by the word (which explains his inability to be brief), one of the more prolific, with thirty-seven plays that would all be five hours long each if performed in full, and over 100 sonnets. He is the author of HAMLET, arguably the greatest work of drama ever, at least in English. (This author has a sorry weakness for Greek comedies.) The problem with being prolific, however, is that some of your writing, no matter how great the best is, may come out not being terribly good - it may even be rubbish occasionally.

All of these points are addressed in THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE (ABRIGED) by Adam Long, Daniel Singer, and Jess Winfield. It ran for nine years in London, and, unfortunately, not so long at Oyster Mill Playhouse, because it really should run long enough for everyone who hasn't seen it before to take it in.

Jeff Wasileski plays the Pre-Eminent Shakespearian Scholar, pre-eminent because he isn't fully eminent yet. He rouses the audience to a fever pitch by preaching the glories of Shakespeare with evangelistic fervor. It's working... until he tries taking up a collection. That's just a start. Jim "Bluto" Fisher and Sam Eisenhuth are there to assist Wasileski with the hijinks, and to get the entire works of Shakespeare on stage within a two hour framework.

Doing so not only abridges the stories, but often yields fresh, new concepts - like ROMEO AND JULIET performed by overaged frat boys. Or TITUS ANDRONICUS as a cooking show - which just may be a vast improvement over the original. And then there's the unforgivable pun, such as Eisenhuth covering himself with boats when playing Othello, because "Othello's a moor." TROILUS AND CRESSIDA meet Godzilla, and indeed, some very bad plays indeed are improved greatly by massive editing. The entire collection of comedies is merged into one play, which is a perfectly sound idea since so many of them, as the cast notes, are pretty much identical.

And then, of course, there's the play that is unlike all others, HAMLET. It's a play of such depth, such complexity, such nuance, that two-thirds of the cast disappear at the thought of tackling it, although admittedly it's partly because Jim is chasing Sam to get him to come back. After rescuing Sam from the airport - he's willing to flee in order not to play the main character - the real show begins. If the first act was fun, the second act is dizzyingly funny. There's the abridged version. Then there's the even more abridged version. Then there's the under-one-minute version, and even a quick performance of HAMLET backwards. In between the laughs, Wasileski delivers a really creditable version of Hamlet's most famous monologue ("To be, or not to be..."). Perhaps Shakespeare's easy and it's comedy that's hard, or else Wasileski is making it seem as if tackling the depressive Dane isn't the effort it's said to be, because he's just that surprisingly good.

It's a delightfully educational romp, even if the show is guilty of only tackling the Sonnets by reference. They could have merged those into one sonnet, as with the comedies, since there are over one hundred poems with only two or three really different themes in the lot. (Or just read Wilde on "Mr. W.H." for another take on that, if you want to complete the sonnet discussion for yourself.)

Closing, though one might wish otherwise, on April 26. Brush up your Shakespeare at Oyster Mill. For information visit www.oystermill.com.