BWW Reviews: Tulane Shakespeare Festival Tackles Shakespeare… All Of It

There are only a few weeks left of the New Orleans Shakespeare Festival at Tulane University, and I urge you to attend a show! My show of choice for this year's festival was THE COMPLETE WORKS OF William Shakespeare (ABRIDGED). I have attended the Shakespeare Festival before and have always enjoyed seeing various renditions of my Shakespeare favorites, and when I saw that THE COMPLETE WORKS was being tackled I knew I couldn't pass it up.

Now, I have a hard cover copy of The Complete Works of William Shakespeare that I was given as a Christmas gift a few years back and have always jokingly called it 'The Bible.' Needless to say I was very excited to know that there are other people out there who love Shakespeare as much as I do and who love it enough to poke fun at it.

I was unsure of how a cast of three men... that's right, three... were going to get through every single one of Shakespeare's works in under two hours, but they did it with ease and a whole lot of humor!

When I first walked into the theater and saw the set, I thought to myself, "hmmm... this looks like something straight out of a Renaissance Festival." Later during a talk-back with one of the show's creators, Jess Winfield, I learned that Renaissance Festival is where this show has its roots. It written in 1987 and inspired by Tom Stoppard's 15 MINUTE HAMLET. THE COMPLETE WORKS has run off-Broadway and on the West End, and thankfully made its way to Tulane this summer.

This is probably one of the most creative pieces of theatre that I have ever witnessed. It includes audience participation (which always makes audiences twitch in their seats), funny antics such as the female characters' affinity for barfing confetti before biting the dust, and the use of sock ghosts and a battery-operated Godzilla toy. Sounds insane, but trust me, it was the perfect touch.

Among my favorite "skits" during the show were TITUS ANDRONICUS played out as a cooking show (so disgusting, yet so genius); OTHELLO done rap style; MACBETH in plaid kilts, Scottish accents, and golf clubs; all of the "king" plays acted out as a football game in which the kings passed the crown; and HAMLET.

HAMELT consumed most of the second half of the show. I pretty much lost it during this segment of the show. HAMLET has always been, and will always be, my absolute favorite and the cast had me holding my stomach from laughing so much. This is where the aforementioned sock ghost came in.

The sock ghost was, you guessed it, King Hamlet! Perfect. Sock puppets were also used for the play-within-the-play, in which The Players re-enact Claudius' murder of the King. The "to be, or not to be" speech consisted of the other actors laughing at Hamlet's angst so much so that he could not get through the full speech. This segment is also where the audience participation happened. The cast decided that Ophelia doesn't get enough "stage time" and that she is more complicated than she appears to be. They invoke the help of the audience to peel apart her layers, which ended in loud screaming, arms flailing, and a bit of a chaotic running. It was a bit of a mess, but the fun level was off the charts.

As if the audience didn't get enough of HAMLET from the first time through, the cast decided it would be a good idea to do the entire segment again, but a little faster. And then again, but even faster. And then again, but backwards! Finally the show ended and I'm almost positive the audience was just as exhausted as the actors.

I hope THE COMPLETE WORKS makes another appearance at the Shakespeare Festival in the future, because I thoroughly enjoyed the show. This play is actually be a great way to become familiar with The Bard without suffering through... I mean reading... all 38 of his plays.

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