Complete Works...
The Compleate Works of William Shakespeare
ABRIDGED
Milwaukee Rep
March 10 2012
Cast:
Joe Dempsey
Ernie González
Gerard Neugent
The show took place in the Stackner Cabaret, which is a tiny theatre. The stage is quite small, and people sit at tables to watch the play. (Hence the name, 'cabaret'.)
I'm quite familiar with this play, having seen it on stage once, and having watched the DVD um-teen times. Because of that, I had certain expectations in mind.
First, I do have a few somewhat negative criticisms that I shall get out of the way.
Overall, the play was very funny, and the actors did a good job. There was a lot of adlibbing involved as they sort of fed off the audience. Because of the set up in the theatre, it was very easy for them to interact with the audience members. This was good and bad. There were a few times when one of the guys would come chat with someone in the audience while another actor was talking, doing the scripted lines. This made the guy doing the scripted lines hard to hear sometimes.
I'm not sure of the right word here. I don't remember the other version of this play that I saw being quite as... I don't know... raunchy... maybe. There always have been some off-color humor in it, but it seemed like they were trying a bit too hard. For example, one of the actors steals a program from someone, and sort of crushes it, so he tries to smooth it out by rubbing it against himself. He started out by pressing it against his chest, but then moved a bit further south with it.
At another point, an actor tells about his manuscript, which he'd like to "whip out for you" and he pulls it out of his pants. It is in the script, but again, they dragged it out a bit more than needed.
One of the off-color jokes in the original didn't really get much of a reaction, but they sort of pretended it did anyway.
This other joke is in the script, but the other two versions of this play that I have seen didn't really make too much of a deal out of it. There's a line quoted directly from Romeo and Juliet: "Call me but love and I will be new baptized." And they opted to hear "but love" as "Butt-love". This got dragged on for a bit too long.
Maybe, yes, I just don't find that sort of thing all that funny, but it really went on too long, and sometimes it felt a bit forced.
The other negative thing that I have is how they handled one of my favorite parts of the play. I adore the "sixteen comedies" bit, and I was disappointed with how they did it. The attraction of that scene to me is that they play it very seriously, as they tell this ridiculous story. In this production, they said that they recorded themselves "last night" reading their play. They played it for a while, and it started off being funny, as one of the actors kept cracking up at it, but then they concluded that this really wasn't very funny, so they stopped the tape. At least, during intermission, they played the rest of it, with a semi-music background. After they finished the bit, they kept the music playing. And then they tagged onto one part of it: "animalistic orgy" which they'd periodically repeat.
Despite how negative I have just sounded, I actually did enjoy the play. There were enough good and funny moments to counter balance it. It's just that I had been looking forward to this show for such a long time that I think I had too high of expectations.
Unfortunately thinks that are funny in person don't always translate to writing, so I'm not going to try very hard to capture all of the humor in my review here. Just take my word for it that the play was very funny.
The set was not at all what I expected it to be. The premise is that these three roommates are going to put on all the complete works of Shakespeare live, from their kitchen! (for fun, I guess?)
So we had a pretty elaborate kitchen set up, with fridge and stove and cabinets. This theme of three guys putting on a play in their apartment carried on through the costumes and the props that they used throughout the play.
Ernie gave the introduction. He gave a pretty funny look to one of the front tables when he said the "no smoking anything" line. Then Gerry gave the introduction to Shakespeare. The lines were updated to make them more current. He had an awesome evangelistic tone as he preached the gospel of Shakespeare. And then Joe was our "plant" in the audience. He gave the biography of Shakespeare on his "inook" on which he had the biography of Shakespeare. And then, he dropped it. And that's how we got to Shakespeare occupying the Rhineland. It actually made a bit more sense than the traditional index cards. And now I knew how the roles were split up.
So Gerry was the narrator for Romeo and Juliet while the other two acted it out. They did a good job on it. My favorite bit though, was that they acted like Joe, as Tybalt, was adlibbing when he was very quickly slain by Romeo (Ernie).
"He skipped all of that!"
"What are we going to do?"
"Stall!"
For his part, Joe said that he didn't want to drag things out. So that was pretty funny.
At this point in the play, Gerry revealed that behind the big book of Shakespeare, he was actually reading some sort of entertainment magazine, and he continued to hold it as he was reading it when he did the next narration. I liked his expression when he did the fun line: "Their fate pursues them, they can't seem to duck it, and at the end of act five, they both kicked the bucket."
Juliet of course vomited into some poor kid's hoodie. The poison that Romeo uses he retrieved from under the sink - Clorox bleach. He fake chugged it and then collapsed. Juliet (Joe) comes to and finds him dead, and starts off all sad, but then on the "oh churl, drunk all and left no friendly drop for me" Juliet smacked Romeo a bit.
Romeo forgot to have a dagger, so Juliet reached behind into the silverware drawer and pulled out... a potato masher. So that was the "dagger"
The trio didn't actually sound half bad during the epilogue.
Titus Andronicus was done Julia Child-style, as is traditional. I don't have that much to say about it. It was amusing, but I don't have much to say about it. The pie had Gerry's fingers sticking out of it puppet-style, and they offered it to several people in the audience.
After that comes the Dark and Brooding tragedy of Othello. Joe comes out with the wrong definition of Moor, but says that he was researching it the day that Wikipedia was down, so it's not his fault. Realizing that the group is 77% white (Ernie is Mexican) they say that they can't do Othello. But, as Gerry says, we won't miss out on much, because the Rep is doing Othello in a few weeks (It really is.) Then Joe launches into the rap. Ernie isn't impressed but Gerry thinks that's the best idea ever. They changed the words a little bit, but not too much.
Then came the comedies, or lack of. But I already talked about that.
So onto Macbeth, which they made a big deal out of not saying the name, since it's cursed. They told this story, true story, that happened to Joe's friend of a friend. Some joker says "Macbeth" in a theatre, and then the next day, one of the actresses in the play lost her keys! It was tragic! She was locked out of her house for several hours.
They were going to do the play in perfect Scottish accents, except for Ernie, who can't do a Scottish accent. But he was the witch anyway, so she's supposed to talk funny. They had the over exaggerated Scottish accents down awesomely. And when Macduff returns with Macbeth's head? A face drawn on a balloon, which he proceeded to pop.
The transition to Julius Cesar wasn't as abrupt as I expected, which was fine, but it wasn't quite as funny that way. I actually liked Joe's wig as Cleopatra. As far as terribly bad female costumes go, this one wasn't that bad at all. He decided to vomit into the front shirt pocket of a guy in the front.
They didn't use the "vomiting on people is not an interpretation line"
I really liked their performance art... performance when Gerry was trying to tell people about Troilus and Cressida, the other two were doing something really bizarre. I don't even remember everything they did, but at some point, a giant tiger stuffed animal, controlled by Joe, was shoving Ernie into the oven.
The Look that Gerry gave them was absolutely fantastic.
So, dressed as Cressida, in a bright purple wig, wearing a leopard print bra, Joe protests at how boring this play seems. He tells the other two that when he became an actor, he made himself two promises. 1) Always maintain your dignity. 2) Never do dry, boring, vomit-less Shakespeare.
The football game was fun. Highlight was at the end when Henry VII scores a touchdown. As the announcer, Gerry shouted out "And there's your dagger!" Which is, of course, a current Green Bay Packers thing. It was a real crowd pleaser.
They did have a list of all of Shakespeare's plays in the program, so it made sense when Gerry stole one from somebody in the audience. I sort of wondered what he was doing when he was scribbling all over it with a sharpie though.
Joe doesn't want to do Hamlet, so he takes off with Gerry in pursuit, leaving Ernie behind to entertain the crowd... with his baritone. It was funny; he kept playing the same song over and over again. And as I said before, they played the recording of sixteen comedies during the intermission, so that was good at least.
The second act is entirely Hamlet, so I'm just going to list off some comments about the second half.
For Hamlet, they had more elaborate costumes. Gerry, as Hamlet, actually had a decent traditional looking Hamlet outfit. Joe was very reluctant at the beginning, as he didn't wanna do this stupid show, but he seemed to get a bit more into it as things progressed.
I like when Hamlet meets Horatio, and they do a special handshake. But they over exaggerated it a little too much I think.
I have to say I was very happy that they did my favorite bad joke of the whole play: "Break we our watch up" and they smash their wrists with their "swords."
Gerry struck a dramatic pose to do the To Be or Not To Be speech, and started in on it, making a rather silly face. (One that I sort of remember from another show he was in last season) He had to keep stalling until someone started laughing, so that could throw him off. He got VERY upset, and was trying to motivate himself into giving the speech, getting more and more upset until the others came on. For some odd reason, Joe was dressed in prison orange, wearing glasses. I'm not entirely sure why.
And they did one of my favorite parts of the play perfectly - when he gives another famous speech from Hamlet, and he plays it straight. The audience was pretty much silent when he got into it. It was awesome.
I liked the puppet show. We had Bertrude and I forgot how he changed the name of Hamlet's father, but it rhymed with Hamlet.
Another funny bit was when Hamlet came out with the "skull" - a Halloween skull bucket. "This skull had a tongue in it once. And then came Halloween!" and he threw candy to one guy in the audience. Later, when they did the show backwards, the audience person threw the candy back in the bucket. It was clever.
The audience participation bit went fine. It probably could have gone a little better, but nothing too noteworthy. We were sitting in the "maybe, maybe not" section. It didn't drag on forever, so that was good.
The duel at the end was funny, Laertes (Ernie) used the standard poison of the show, the bleach, to poison his sword. And Joe struggled to keep his characters straight as he alternated between the king and the queen.
My favorite parts of the second act, actually, are when they do it faster (the first time) and then when they do it backwards. They did not disappoint! All three of the actors were very good at doing things backwards, and it was a good, hilarious ending to an already funny show.