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All sixteen comedies are condensed into one story containing a shipwreck, an influential duke, and his three sets of identical twins. The tragedies become the Shakespeare Football League, subtitled "Who's Got the Crown?" For Othello, they turn to rap; Titus Andronicus is reduced to a cooking show; and Hamlet, despite protestations by the cast that there are “too many words,” is done not only forwards, but backwards as well!
Written in 1987 by the original founders of the Reduced Shakespeare Company, Daniel Singer, Jess Winfield and Adam Long, The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (Abridged) underwent many years of metamorphosis before its formal publishing in the United State in 1996. A smash hit Off-Broadway as well as the longest running comedy in London, Shakespeare (Abridged) is "Very funny! Impossible to resist!" (New York Times).
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