By DAVID DUPONT
BG Independent News
Put all of Shakespeare’s 38 plays in a blender and set it to puree. That blender is so full the top will pop, and the contents will spill over.
That’s “ShakeSPLOSION!!!,” the mash-up of the Bard’s work for young thespians.
The Horizon Youth Theatre, directed by Cassie Greenlee, will stage the Andrew Geha script Friday, June 16 and Saturday June 17 at 7 p.m. and Sunday June 18 at 2 p.m. Click for tickets.
How to fit all this into an hour and a half with intermission, given “Hamlet,” itself is four hours long? With great abandon. Just let loose 30 or so youngsters from eight-year-olds to just-graduated high school seniors, and then let the bodies fall where they may.
And yes, this being Shakespeare, the butcher’s bill is quite heavy, though death here is delivered by an impish Ribbon-Dancing Spectre of Death (Carina Motisher) who waves her length of black crepe to signal the demise of a character. At the end of “Hamlet,” that includes just about the entire cast, which streams from the wings to meet their fate.
The first victim of “ShakeSPLOSION!!!,” though is the character Mr. Keith (Keith Guion), an adult summoned to fill in for missing cast members. The play “King John” and Mr. Keith as the title character is dispatched with a simple sip from a poisoned goblet. Then it’s on to the history plays.
These are a tangle of kings, the occasional queen, usurpers, all leading up to the War of Roses – the Ribbon-Dancing Spectre of Death gets a workout leading up to Jac Edge’s turn as Richard III.
The casting is as complex as the English royal lines with actors moving in and out of roles, and the action shifting from play to play, and characters flitting in and out.
The script does give the young actors a chance to learn a few of the classic bits of monologue. Liam Rogel makes the best of Henry V’s band of brothers monologue.
Alice Walters, though, as Hamlet is continually interrupted as she tries to perform the “to be or not to be” soliloquy.
Hamlet gets the most extended treatment, a full 12 minutes, or as the Shakespeare nerd Judith (Regan Otley) tells her fellow narrator Susanna (Fox Roberts-Zibbel), that’s 5 percent of the original. Still, somehow, they insert a pirate battle into the play, an incident Shakespeare only refers to in passing. But a pirate battle is always called for, Susanna said, even when a literary masterpiece is being cut to bits.
“Macbeth,” directed by senior Eli Marx with Leo Roberts-Zibbel as Macbeth and Alice Walters as Lady Macbeth, also gets a little more time. The witches (Claire Nelson, Ginger Windom, and Sophia Milks) more like a junior high clique than a coven of crones. Mr. Keith is summoned again to play Duncan, which means sitting in a chair, and being killed by Macbeth.
Other plays rush, literally, by. During a section dealing with the comedies, four actors continually disrupt the scenes, as they rush across the stage. Finally, we learn they are the quartet of lovers from “Midsummer Night’s Dream.” Sadly, neither Puck nor Bottom make an appearance that I noticed. But then HYT has produced the comedy.
The script comments on the recurring elements of the comedies – the prevalence of separated twins, of women in men’s clothes, and the appearance of characters assumed to have died.
The script tweaks the plays at times. In this version “Taming of the Shrew” ends with Kate (Ginger Windom) slugging Petruchio (Nic Fecht). That’s not how it ends, Judith exclaims. It’s how it should end, Katrina responds.
And when they realize they had missed “King Lear,” Mr. Keith is brought forth again, fearing yet another summary execution, he begs. These are my children! He loves them, don’t they love him? He is consumed by a group hug.
The play ends with characters reciting classic lines, first one, then another on top until we’re left with a cacophony of lovely words. A fitting end for a play that in the true spirit of parody is rooted in love of the original material.
.
