Reduced Shakespeare Company

Confused by Confucius? Thrown by Thoreau? Wish Swift was swifter or Tennyson tinier?

Not to worry! This fall, the world renowned Reduced Shakespeare Company, those “bad boys of abridgement,” will return to Washington University’s Edison Theatre for the St. Louis premiere of All the Great Books (abridged), an action-packed literary romp through everything you should have read in high school but probably didn’t.

Performances, presented by the Edison Theatre OVATIONS! Series, begin at 8 p.m. Friday and Saturday, Nov. 19 and 20. Tickets are $28; $24 seniors and Washington University faculty and staff; and $18 for students and children. Tickets are available at the Edison Theatre Box Office and through all MetroTix outlets. Edison Theatre is located in the Mallinckrodt Student Center, 6445 Forsyth Blvd. For more information, call (314) 935-6543.

All the Great Books marks the Reduced Shakespeare Company’s third trip to Edison Theatre, following Western Civilization: The Complete Musical (abridged) in 1999 and The Bible: The Complete Word of God (abridged) in 1996.

All the Great Books begins when a group of busily cramming students (played by the audience) discovers that their English teacher has been trampled at a J.K. Rowling book signing. To help them pass a critical test, the football coach, drama teacher and a slightly daft student teacher attempt to cover 83 books in 98 minutes, employing all manner of impromptu props, crazy costumes and shameless gags. Highlights include the juggling Brothers Karamazov, a football-inspired Little Women and a bachelorette dating game with Jane Austen, George Eliot and Virginia Woolf.

The Reduced Shakespeare Company

Since starting out in 1981 as a pass-the-hat act at California Renaissance fairs, the Reduced Shakespeare Company has created five major stage shows, four television programs and numerous radio pieces.

The company’s first two shows — The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (abridged), which debuted in 1987, and The Complete History of America (abridged), which debuted in 1993 — are London’s longest-running comedies, having played in repertory at West End’s Criterion Theatre since 1996. The Bible joined the London rotation in 2003, giving the troupe more West End shows than Andrew Lloyd Webber.

For television, the RSC filmed a live performance of The Complete Shakespeare for PBS and wrote and starred in The Ring Reduced, a half-hour version of Wagner’s epic Ring Cycle, for Britain’s Channel 4. Other credits include reducing the Edinburgh Festival for the BBC and the soap opera Glenroe for RTE Ireland, and providing voices for Steven Spielberg’s animated film Balto.

The company’s six-part radio series, The Reduced Shakespeare Radio Show, aired on the BBC World Service in 1994. They also wrote Gone With The Wind II — Scarlet Fever for the BBC and in America are frequent contributors to National Public Radio’s All Things Considered. Their holiday special, The Reduced Shakespeare Company Christmas, is broadcast annually on Public Radio International.

Edison Theatre

Edison Theatre’s OVATIONS! Series serves both Washington University and the St. Louis community by providing the highest caliber national and international artists in music, dance and theater, performing new works as well as innovative interpretations of classical material not otherwise seen in St. Louis. Focusing on presentations that are interdisciplinary, multicultural and/or experimental, Edison Theatre presents work intended to challenge, educate and inspire.

Edison Theatre programs are supported by the Missouri Arts Council, a state agency, and the Regional Arts Commission, St. Louis.