A classical actor who appeared in a recent production of Othello told me that the cast was alarmed by the murders being met on many nights by blasts of laughter. This may be due to audiences having seen the Reduced Shakespeare Company’s 1987 show The Complete Works of Shakespeare (Abridged) during its long West End runs or world tours. Or other examples of the trend for carved-up Bard that this alernative “RSC” started, including Spymonkey’s The Complete Deaths, making central an incidental aspect of Long’s shortening: the climactic body pile-ups.
At Adam Long’s revival of the show, co-written by Long, Daniel Singer and Jess Winfield, it is apparent, from interval conversations, that many who were taken to The Complete Works as teenagers are now bringing their own. Topical tweaks acknowledge this. Louis Theroux, a sixth-former when the original version premiered, has grown up to get a gag in this iteration, as have other contemporary phenomena, including Ozempic.
