Hamlet; The Reduced Shakespeare Company: The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (abridged)

A mounting of Romeo & Juliet in which the lesson learned is "Just Say No"? Titus Andronicus presented as an Emeril Lagasse-inspired cooking class? The Bard's histories staged as a football game, substituting the crown for the pigskin? O, brave new theater, that has such wickedly funny satire in't. The Reduced Shakespeare Company, a three-man comedy troupe comprised of Adam Long, Reed Martin, and Austin Tichenor, perform their long-running London stage hit here, compressing all 37 of Shakespeare's plays into a very funny 90 minutes. Strictly speaking, this is not verbatim Willie (I don't recall the line from Macbeth--performed entirely with trilling 'r's befitting the Scottish subject--"you did a jobbie in my stew," for instance; or the on-the-spot diagnosis of Hamlet as "cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs"), but I've little doubt that the Stratford-upon-Avon poet would have loved this spirited butchery of his beloved works. Mildly ribald (in Othello--here performed as a rap number--there is a reference to the suspicion of Desi and Casio "playing hide the salami," and Hamlet's play within a play features sock puppets that get a little overheated), theatrically artful (the boys do so much with very little in the way of props), and thoroughly entertaining, this is highly recommended for both general audiences and high school students needing a break from, in the words of playwright Tom Stoppard, the real thing. Aud: H, C, P. And speaking of the real thing, seven years after wowing audiences in The Big Chill, Kevin Kline tackled The Big Will: Hamlet, the enchilada grande of Shakespearean roles. Staged by Joseph Papp and the New York Shakespeare Festival, and taped for Thirteen/WNET's Great Performances, the DVD version of Hamlet gets off to an inauspicious start, technically speaking: as the ghost of Hamlet's father wafts over the ramparts on a dark and murky night, he travels a cross-hatched, wavy looking landscape--a visual eyesore compounded by the fact that the production was shot on video not film. Fortunately, most of the action takes place inside, and even though the wavy quality never completely disappears, it takes a back seat in the consciousness relatively quickly, thanks to Kline's solid interpretation of the melancholy Dane who, confronted with the slings and arrows of outrageous misfortune (his father murdered by his uncle, who then weds and beds his mother) promptly straddles a mental fence and wrings his hands for nearly five full acts. For those mostly familiar with Kline's comic work--including his wonderful portrayal of Nick Bottom in 1999's A Midsummer Night's Dream--his darkly brooding, emotional Hamlet may come as a bit of a surprise. While Kline (who also co-directed with Kirk Browning) is the center of the production, he is joined by a capable cast of supporting players, including Dana Ivey as Gertrude, Brian Murray as Claudius, Diane Venora as Ophelia, Josef Sommer as Polonius and Michael Cumsty as Laertes. Recommended. Also available: King Lear starring James Earl Jones. Aud: H, C, P. (R. Pitman)