Compleat chaos

Here’s how utterly solemn and serious “The Compleat Works of Shakespeare (abridged)” is in its approach toward the Bard.

All of Shakespeare’s history plays, including “Richard III,” are performed as a kind of football game, culminating in this timeless line: “The quarterback hands off to the hunchback!”

The Spokane Civic Theatre tackles this slapstick version of Shakespeare in its annual summer show beginning next Wednesday on the Main Stage.

This wild, fast-paced show was conceived in the early 1990s by the Reduced Shakespeare Company, made up of three comedy actors from California. They created it as a kind of extended comedy-improv show using a lot of improv-style tricks and techniques. For instance, at one point they do a backwards version of “Hamlet,” using the reverse-motion improv technique.

Pretty soon they had a show full of bits that worked. It became a smash and soon went to New York, where it ran for 164 performances off-Broadway with the original cast of Jess Borgeson, Adam Long and Daniel Singer (who are also credited as the show’s writers).

The Civic did it in the downstairs Studio Theatre in 1999 with great success. The first half of the show furiously dispatches every Shakespeare play ever written, with the help of a couple of gimmicks. The football game takes care of every history play, and all of the comedies are handled by inventing one plot that incorporates points from each one.

“Troilus and Cressida” is done as interpretive dance performance art. “Titus Andronicus” is treated as a Julia Child-like cooking show (a very brutal one).

That leaves only “Romeo and Juliet” and “Hamlet” for the second act. You’ll see four versions of “Hamlet,” including that backwards one.

Three actors play all of the characters, with help from lots of wigs and costume changes. Stuart McKenzie reprises his manic performance from the 1999 Studio Theatre version. Ron Ford and Paul Villabrille fill the other two roles. Wes Deitrick directs.

The show tends to be bawdy and risqué, so it’s not for what Shakespeare called the “whining schoolboy with a satchel” – or schoolgirl, for that matter.

It has an unusual performance schedule, a departure from the usual Civic weekend format. It begins next Wednesday and continues on consecutive days through Sept. 2 (except Aug. 30).

The show’s opening was pushed into late summer because of management issues at the Civic, which meant the run had to be compressed into a smaller time frame.