This is a review of The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (Abridged), produced each summer by the Cincinnati Shakespeare Company.
The play is re-done, re-written, re-staged each summer. Some bits will be the same, others will disappear, props change, etc in this brief re-staging of all 37 of Shakespeare’s plays. And they never got around to any sonnets this year.
Billy Chace, pseudo intellectual and generally merry person, Justin McCombs, all the female roles and general all around man on the street, and Brian Isaac Phillips, Shakes fearless leader non-plussed by design in this performance, are all fantastic. So much of this comedy is physical that many of us were almost literally rolling in the aisles. And, in the case of our group portrayal of Ophelia’s state of mind, one of us was running, another screaming, with the rest shouting out contradictory messages, waving our arms, and having a rollicking good time.
This company is terrific, this play is an experience to be enjoyed more than once. And grinned about from time to time after the experience.