Instant Shakespeare comes to Lycian

Sugarloaf — Kings Theatre Company will present "The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (Abridged)" at 8 p.m. on Friday, Sept. 30, at the Lycian Centre for the Performing Arts. Three actors, performing 37 plays and 154 sonnets in two hours, illuminate the world of Shakespeare through the use of football, swordplay and hip-hop music. Written in 1987 by Daniel Singer, Jess Winfield, and Adam Long, the original founders of the Reduced Shakespeare Company, it underwent many years of metamorphosis before being formally published in the United States in 1996. All sixteen of Shakespeare's comedies are condensed into one story containing a shipwreck, an influential duke, and his three sets of identical twins. The tragedies have become a Shakespeare Football League, with players wondering who's got the crown. Othello is done in rap, Titus Andronicus is reduced to a cooking show, and Hamlet is done not only forwards, but backwards as well. A smash hit Off-Broadway, and the longest running comedy in London, the show was called "Very funny, impossible to resist," by the New York Times, and "Great fun; Monty Python, the Marx Brothers and Mad magazine all rolled into one," by the New York Post. Tickets are $28 for adults and $21 for youth 18 and under. The Lycian Centre for the Performing Arts is on Kings Highway in Sugar Loaf. For more information about upcoming shows or to purchase tickets, call the box office between 11 a.m. and 4 p.m., Tuesday through Saturday, at 469-2287.