‘Excess of It’: Reviewing 'William Shakespeare’s Long Lost First Play (abridged)'
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.31273/eirj.v4i1.147Keywords:
Shakespeare, Adaptation, Popular Culture, Reduced Shakespeare Company, Theatre, ComedyAbstract
It is timely in 2016, the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare’s death, to consider his legacy as a figure ingrained within popular culture. This critical review will investigate one of the chief exponents and parodists of the dichotomy which Shakespeare symbolises between supposed ‘highbrow’ and ‘lowbrow’ culture: the Reduced Shakespeare Company, a comedic theatre troupe who, to use their own slogan of droll self-deprecation, have been ‘reducing expectations since 1981’.
The review will investigate the company’s most recent and tenth production, William Shakespeare’s Long Lost First Play (abridged), as a template for considering Shakespearean parody, focusing on the contemporary process of adapting and condensing Shakespeare’s texts within a populist context.
Debuted at the Folger Shakespeare Library in April 2016, the play was first performed in the United Kingdom in August 2016 as part of the Edinburgh Festival Fringe. It is those performances upon which this review focuses. It will also use primary material drawn from live interviews and rehearsal observations conducted with Reed Martin and Austin Tichenor, the company’s managing partners, co-directors, co-writers and performers.
Downloads
References
Branagh, Kenneth (2011), Thor, Marvel Studios.
Martin, Reed and Austin Tichenor (2015), William Shakespeare’s Long Lost First Play (abridged), The Reduced Shakespeare Company.
McReery, Del Col and Anthony Del Col (2010-2014), Kill Shakespeare, San Diego, IDW Publishing.
Tichenor, Austin (2015), personal interview, 19 November.
Tichenor, Austin (2016a), personal interview, 17 April.
Tichenor, Austin (2016b), personal interview, 18 April.
Whedon, Joss (2012), The Avengers, Marvel Studios.
Downloads
Published
Issue
Section
License
Authors who publish with this journal agree to the following terms:
Authors retain copyright and grant the journal right of first publication with the work simultaneously licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution License (CC-BY), which permits use and redistribution of the work provided that the original author and source are credited, a link to the license is included, and an indication of changes which were made. Third-party users may not apply legal terms or technological measures to the published article which legally restrict others from doing anything the license permits.
If accepted for publication authors’ work will be made open access and distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution (CC-BY) license unless previously agreed with Exchanges’ Editor-in-Chief prior to submission.
Authors are able to enter into separate, additional contractual arrangements for the non-exclusive distribution of the journal's published version of the work (e.g., post it to an institutional repository or publish it in a book), with an acknowledgement of its initial publication in this journal.
Authors are permitted and encouraged to post their work online (e.g., in institutional repositories or on their website) prior to and during the submission process, as it can lead to productive exchanges, as well as earlier and greater citation of published work. (see: The Effect of Open Access)
