Hamlet is dying. Fatally pierced by Laertes' poisoned rapier, the Prince of Denmark draws his breath in pain to speak his immortal last line:
"Rosebud."
The two other corpses on the stage are twitching with laughter. The line isn't in Shakespeare—or even in the script of The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (Abridged). That famous dying word from Citizen Kane is a spontaneous ad lib, delivered during a rehearsal for this Sunday's performance of the play, an irreverent fast-forward through the entire canon.
The ad lib is perfectly in keeping with this homage a trois, in which three actors manically summarize, abridge, parody and improvise their way through every known work of Shakespeare in under two hours. Created and first performed by the Reduced Shakespeare Company (whose motto is "Comedy for the quick of mind and short of time"), it was the hit of New Century Theatre's 1998 season. It's being restaged for this summer's lineup in honor of the company's 20th anniversary, with a preview this weekend at the Academy of Music as the second show in the Northampton Arts Council's annual Four Sundays in February festival.
As the Arts Council's Bob Cilman says, "For all of us who have maybe waded through one Shakespeare play, this will be an opportunity to pretend we've seen them all." And for confirmed Bardolators, there are plenty of in-jokes tucked into the broad comedy.
The Ed
This Sunday's show comes on the heels of the sold-out Silver Chord Bowl and is followed by An Afternoon in Brooklyn on Feb. 21, featuring the long-awaited return of The Young Hoofers tap dancing troupe, and culminates on Feb. 28 with the festival's perennial anchor, The Really Big Show, this year starring the irrepressible Kelsey Flynn as emcee Ed Sullivan.
"Of all the things we've done over the years," Cilman says, "the one group that people keep asking me, 'Are we ever going to bring them back?' are The Young Hoofers."
The Brooklyn-based troupe first appeared in Four Sundays in 1999, and the next generation has gone on to twice win the "Showtime @ the Apollo" talent contest, among other triumphs. They'll be joined at the Academy by 88-year-old Mable Lee, a luminary of tap dance history and still on her feet. Also on the bill is the Grammy-winning Brooklyn Youth Chorus, a multiracial children's ensemble that's equally at home performing with symphony orchestras and rock bands.
Each year, The Really Big Show picks a well-known local figure to impersonate Ed Sullivan, the iconic and much-parodied host of the ultimate TV variety show. This year actor/comedian and River DJ Kelsey Flynn is "the Ed," as Cilman terms it.
"There have been so many vaunted Eds in the past," Flynn says, "it's a humbling experience. Also, people seem to assume that I have done it before. Many times I've gotten, 'I loved you when you were Ed.' So I don't know why I just didn't say no when Bob asked me, and rest on my imaginary laurels. I'd be much less nervous."
"The Ed often has a lot to do with selecting the acts for the show," Cilman reports. "In this case, Kelsey is taking it to a whole new level. She's made a short film that will open the show, about Ed Sullivan's early years, from a baby with a necktie and on up. And because of Kelsey, this year we're focusing on a lot of comedy improv and sketch groups, as well as great music and juggling."
Flynn has recruited "some very funny folks that I'm lucky enough to know and who live around here." They include comedian Cathy McNally (voted "the best Sarah Palin impersonator in her weight class"), sketch-comedy group Side of Toast, long-form improv trio Boot, and the August Company theater troupe, catching New Century's coattails with a five-minute version of The Sound of Music. In addition, Flynn's parents will be co-hosting with her, and leading the audience in a couple of topical sea chanties.
Timing Shakespeare
New Century Theatre's revival of The Complete Works reunites the company's 1998 cast (Sam Rush, Brian Smith and Phil Kilbourne, all three past masters of foolery), directed by storyteller extraordinaire Tom McCabe, director of the PaintBox Theatre for kids. The quartet have worked together many times over the years—"a billion," according to Kilbourne—stretching back into the '70s and early '80s.
Rush, who is New Century's Producing Director, says, "When you've done as many shows as we have done together, and so many of them have been comedies, you get a comfort level and familiarity. There's a look in the eye and you know how it has to time out, and it times out. If we didn't know each other so well, we wouldn't be able to put this together in the short time period we've got."
Even with the 12-year time gap since they last performed this show, Rush marvels, "It all comes back to you when you're up there. There's this body memory that remembers large parts of the show." Then, running a hand over his now-bald pate, he adds, "And then I look up and see these two old guys and I think, 'What's going on?'"
The Complete Works opens with a send-up of Romeo and Juliet that would cure the most romantic Valentine's Day heart-flutters, continues with the cannibalistic Titus Andronicus presented as a TV cooking show, condenses all the Chronicle plays about English kings into a frantic football game with the crown as the ball, and concludes with an extended, multipart exploration of Hamlet that includes an audience draftee as Ophelia and the entire audience as the mad girl's Freudian brain. And speaking of audience participation: For the first time ever, according to Cilman, the Academy's orchestra pit will be covered, creating a thrust stage that brings the action right down to the front row.
The play's informal, jokey structure easily accommodates improvisation—indeed, positively invites it. "One of my favorite things about this process," McCabe says, "is when they just throw something in there randomly during rehearsal, and it ends up sticking"—like the "Rosebud" crack, which may or may not be heard in Sunday's performance.
"No two performances will ever be exactly the same," Rush promises. "My hope is that if people enjoy it in February they'll say, 'Let's go and see it again this summer.'" But he concedes it's a risk, a delicate balance between satisfying the public's appetite now and whetting it for more in July.
The performance is sponsored by the Kahn Liberal Arts Institute at Smith College, whose two study themes this academic year are "Telling Time: Its Meaning and Measurement" and "Wellness and Disease." The connection (rather tenuous, perhaps) to the show can be seen in its inverse relativity— if time expands as you go faster, then condensing the complete works into a 90-minute space-time continuum will seem like eternity—as well as the fact that some parts of the show are just sick.
