The Reduced Shakespeare Company hysterically illustrated in two hours what an intensive course in Great Books would teach in two months.
By Maya Minwary
Assistant A&E Editor
Reading an almost 1500-page Russian book like “War and Peace” (or any classic literature for that matter) can be intimidating, not to mention time consuming. Fortunately, for those who are avid fans of “Cliff’s Notes” at Pepperdine, the Reduced Shakespeare Company condensed the entire canon of Western Literature into one delightful sitting in its version of “All the Great Books (abridged).”
From Virgil’s “The Aeneid” to Henry David Thoreau’s “Walden,” the bad boys of abridgement illustrated what an intensive two-hour course in Great Books might be like taught by a sensitive coach (Reed Martin), a serious drama professor (Austin Tichenor) and a dimwitted student teacher (Matthew Crooke). PHOTO COURTESY THE REDUCED
SHAKESPEARE COMPANY
The show began with the coach addressing the audience as his remedial class who needed to be prepared in Western Literature within two hours before graduation. With the help of the professor and Matt, the student teacher, the “class” began learning shortly after the pledge of allegiance.
Within this remedial classroom setting, the RSC team hysterically turned Charles Dicken’s novels into a soap opera, did a Spanish production of “Don Quixote” (with an English translation provided, of course), created a puppet show of Homer’s “The Odyssey” and many other Great Books parodies, including a dating show of female British authors.
The team also had some of the audience laughing, while others jeered, when their parody of the modern controversy surrounding Mark Twain’s “Huckleberry Finn” turned into a joke about President Bush and weapons of mass destruction.
There was no sleeping in “class” as the RSC actors threw dolls and balls, while they spat and threw water at each other to make books such as Hemmingway’s “The Old Man and the Sea” come to life.
The show began winding down with a lesson in Leo Tolstoy’s “War and Peace.” The RSC crew did a great job of reducing the 1500-page story into a 10-minute dramatic production that surprisingly incorporated the book’s theme and character analysis.
“All the Great Books (abridged)” appropriately ended with Matt telling a one-line summary of all the Great Books.
“We come from apes,” Matt said about Charles Darwin’s “Origin of Species.” “Don’t do drugs,” he added about Lewis Carroll’s “Alice in Wonderland.”
Great Books students or classic literature fanatics would especially appreciate some of the more subtle jokes such as why the coach just sat in a chair lifelessly while serene, bird-chirping music played in the background when he illustrated “Walden.”
Although many of the jokes were closely related to the stories of the Great Books, the RSC show probably wasn’t as funny to those who are unfamiliar with Charles Dickens or Dostoevsky. But, since many schools require students to read most of these books anyway, there were probably few in the audience who did not get the jokes.
Overall, the RSC accomplished its goal in condensing all the Great Books into two hours worth of comical, laugh-out loud improv. Who else can get by with turning a classic like “Little Women” into a baseball play-by-play, complete with stick figure drawings by the coach?
October 23, 2003