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(L-R) Michael Faulkner, Matthew Croke and Reed
Martin reduce the literature and increase the laughs.
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Given the common wisdom that "less is more," Cincinnatians will have an abundantly amusing summer thanks to the Reduced Shakespeare Co. (They go by RSC, but don't confuse them with their similarly acronymed competitors, England's Royal Shakespeare Co.)
A veritable festival of abridged, comic material from the funny, fevered brains of the RSC will be onstage for summertime entertainment, including a brand-new work in progress at the Cincinnati Playhouse in the Park, The Reducers. Also sharing the compressed laughs will be The Know Theatre Tribe, who in June offer the Cincinnati premiere of The Bible: The Complete Word of God (Abridged) -- the same show gets a second Cincinnati staging at the Playhouse next December -- and the Cincinnati Shakespeare Festival with their reprise of The Compleat Works of Wllm Shakespeare (Abridged) in July and August.
In a recent phone conversation -- more like being a birdie in a comedy badminton tournament, I might add -- with Reed Martin in Chicago and Adam Tichenor in Los Angeles, I learned that the RSC has productions all over the world. (Check out their Web site, www.reducedshakespeare.com, for details.) The repertory run of Shakespeare and their 1993 work, The Complete History of America (Abridged), is now London's longest-running show.
"The Bible is touring Australia right now and also Great Britain and the regions," Tichenor says. "Now they're talking about taking The Reducers next winter to the U.K. to take over The Bible tour. We're the McDonald's of comedy!"
Tichenor and Martin work with Adam Long -- who co-authored Shakespeare with Daniel Singer and Jess Borgeson, based on material they developed for the Renaissance Faire circuit -- to develop the new show, which boils down great works of Western literature to their surprisingly comic essence.
After they created the American history show, Tichenor says, it became clear they had a good thing going.
"Suddenly Shakespeare was not the most important part of our name -- 'Reduced' was," he says. "We figured there were plenty of things to reduce. The trick has been to find things that are large and worthy of this approach."
From RSC's roots at rough-and-tumble Renaissance Faires, Martin says their guiding principle remains the "three F's -- fast, funny and physical." People pay to get into the cleavage-and-beer weekends, he says, but "you need to keep them until the end, when they put money in the hat" for individual acts.
Tichenor, with roots in children's theater, also learned how to hold a group's attention.
"If you can keep an audience of 5-year-olds quiet and interested for 50 minutes, well, that's the hardest job you'll ever have," he says. "Adults are just slightly more polite about expressing their impatience."
Martin and Tichenor plan to keep The Reducers in this attention-grabbing vein with about 98 minutes of material. It'll eventually encompass at least 50 great works, maybe 100.
"Of course," Martin points out, "we can 'encompass' a great book by mentioning its title."
"The big ones at the moment look like The Iliad and The Odyssey, which we're combining and calling The Idioddity," Tichenor elaborates. "We'll do Don Quixote in the original Spanish. We'll probably begin the second act with Ulysses and finish with War and Peace. Along the way we'll do all of Dickens."
Martin chimes in, "Don't forget Walden by Thoreau, and then Walden by Hemingway, which is a little more action-packed."
As with their other works, The Reducers will involve the audience.
"It's a classroom, a remedial literature class," Martin says. "Everyone needs to pass it to graduate, and graduation is in two hours."
"The English teacher has been tragically and comically killed at a book signing," Tichenor says, "and we are the three substitute teachers dragged in to complete the course. There's a midterm and a final, and all sorts of classroom interaction."
In fact, the Cincinnati Playhouse production during July is a test drive for the material, which has been onstage briefly only in workshops in Los Angeles and in Massachusetts, once-a-week performances seeking audience feedback. Cincinnati will be the show's first extended run, eight times a week for three weeks. (Selected audiences will be invited to provide feedback here, too.)
Why Cincinnati, you might ask?
"So many theaters give lip service to wanting to develop new work," Martin points out. "Then we say, 'We're working on a new show, can we come and work it out at your theater?' Suddenly they're a lot more interested in the finished product and say, 'Come back in a year.' The Cincinnati Playhouse has been terrific: They said, 'Absolutely, we want to be in on the ground floor.' "
After Cincinnati, RSC moves The Reducers to the Alabama Shakespeare Festival for another multi-week run. That's followed by some weekend gigs, a holiday stint in Pittsburgh and January in Seattle. Tichenor and Martin have a commitment to present the "final" script in an eight-week premiere next summer at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C.
Of course, as Martin points out, "It's a great gig to have. Unlike doing a real play, where you have to do what's scripted or what the director says or have to pretend that the play is going on when an audience member coughs or gets up and leaves, we can do whatever."
In fact, if you attend more than once during their Cincinnati engagement, you'll likely see the performers doing different material, re-ordering elements or even ad-libbing wholly new bits.
They're excited about how The Reducers has come together, Tichenor says, since for several years they've resided in different cities, exchanging developing material via e-mail. Now he and Martin both live in L.A.
"This has been much faster and more immediate," Tichenor says. "We write it, and we put it up. I'm as excited for The Reducers as I've been for any of the shows because the process has been so lean and immediate."
Asked to offer advice to prepare Cincinnati audiences for The Reducers, Martin suggests motion sickness medication.
"The more they drink, the funnier we are," Tichenor adds. "And please, for God's sake, be on time to the theater. We do break through that fourth wall."
His final thought: "They'll laugh, they'll cry, they'll piss good money good-bye."
But it'll be small money, I'm sure. Small minds, as we'll see this summer at the Playhouse, the Cincinnati Shakespeare Festival and The Know Theatre Tribe, are capable of making big things work in funny ways.
THE BIBLE: THE COMPLETE WORD OF GOD (ABRIDGED) will be performed June 13-29 by The Know Theatre Tribe at Gabriel's Corner, 1425 Sycamore St., Over-the-Rhine. THE REDUCERS will be performed July 9-28 by Cincinnati Playhouse in the Park during its PNC Advisors Summer Playhouse Season. THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WLLM SHKSPR (ABRIDGED) will be performed July 25-Aug. 18 by Cincinnati Shakespeare Festival, 719 Race St., Downtown.
