| The Complete History of America (Abridged) | | Print | |
| Written by M.J. Garland | |
| Monday, 28 May 2007 | |
 What a way to close the Virginia Stage Company's season and open the Virginia Arts Festival's season than with the return the Reduced Shakespeare Company (RSC). Here is a group which began in the late 80's with the idea of creating shows about topics that could not possibly be covered in two hours. Yet they do.
First was there production of The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (Abridged) which covers all 38 of Shakespeare's plays in less than two hours. Well, what does one do next but The Complete History of America (Abridged)? This includes over 50 years of U.S. History - or rather the history of America since they start us off with Christopher Columbus and bring us to joke on George W.
What makes their productions even more amazing is that they do each one of them with 3 people playing all 60+ characters.
The show opens with us learning about the world not being flat with Vespucci and his abusive wife. From there, we sail our way through the trip of some man called Christopher Columbus and his desire to reach the Indies but instead meets some people called "Indians".
 We are introduced to the "tribal" world of the Indians through a performance piece which borders stereotype and moves directly into the absurd. During Act I, battles are fought... some are won, some are lost and others aren't necessarily resolved. We stop at the assassination of Lincoln who is a man in a long black coat, a tall black hat and a balloon for a head. After all, if you are going to assassinate someone you can't actually make it one of the actors. Instead we pop the balloon and Lincoln's brains "graffiti" is splattered across the stage. Now this may seem over the top but these gentlemen are so clever with their presentation that you have to take even the most absurd moments and laugh at them.
As in most of their productions you complete almost the entire topic in Act I and then in Act II you cover one small topic and spread it out. In this case, we spend a lot of time with the current president answering questions on education, war, and other areas of politics. Actually I think you get stronger and better answers from the man playing the president than the actual man who is the president.
Unfortunately it doesn't look like they are coming back next season with another production. Other works this group has written are The Bible - the Complete Work of God (Abridged) which includes both the old and new testament with a lot of fun songs, and they have even done all of Hollywood in Millennium the musical where they play all the instruments and cover the entire millennium in less than two hours. This is the only production in which they use a woman.
If you ever get a chance to catch them it is worth the trip.
As they say in the RSC, "since brevity is the soul of wit, we shall be brief."
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