Complete Works

Tonight I saw the second play of the Livermore Shakespeare Festival’s season, The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (abridged) [revised]. I again joined Bob and Blanca. This is a fast moving comedy featuring only three actors, that tries (sort-of) to spin through snippets of all of Shakespeare’s 37 plays in a little over an hour and a half. It has apparently been around for around 20 years. It was pretty much silly comedy. Some parts were funny, some parts were too silly (stupid) for me. One successful segment was when they brought two people up onto the stage (one of which was a little girl), then engaged the audience in three groups to call out lines ending with the little girl screaming. (It was all supposed to represent the mental turmoil that Ophelia was going through with Hamlet.) It was a fun, warm, evening, and I’m glad I went even if it wasn’t the greatest thing I’ve ever seen.