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Free Fall Baltimore
October 5th
free final preview

6:00pm Gallery Reception:
Shakespeare inspired artworks by students of Roland Park Middle School

8:00pm Preview Performance

SOLD OUT!

October 6-29, 2006
on the Elizabethan Stage at St Mary's

Fridays & Saturdays at 8pm
Sundays at 5pm
Student Matinees October 19 & 25
Thursday Evening Show Added October 26th at 8:00pm!

Baltimore Sun Review

Baltimore City Paper Review

Bard in brief is anything but boring
BY J. WYNN ROUSUCK
SUN THEATER CRITIC
ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED OCTOBER 11, 2006

When it comes to producing Shakespeare, for most theaters, bigger is better. Consider Shakespeare in Washington; in the first six months of 2007, this festival will feature more than 75 Shakespeare-related events.

The Baltimore Shakespeare Festival has taken the opposite approach -- smaller and sassier. The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (abridged) is a two-hour, three-man, irreverent rendition of Shakespeare's entire canon. Think CliffsNotes-meets-Monty Python.

Scripted by its original performers, Adam Long, Daniel Singer and Jess Winfield, it is rollickingly performed here by Ben Kingsland (dry-heaving his way through most of the women's roles), Bolton Marsh (whose pseudo-pretentiousness is reminiscent of Will Ferrell) and James Kinstle (the festival's artistic director, whose ever-increasing resemblance to Shakespeare is getting spooky).

Among the highlights of this fast-forward fest are a rap version of Othello, incongruously performed by the threesome in white formalwear, and the cannibalistic Titus Andronicus presented as a cooking show. Larding on a thick French accent, Kinstle plays a Julia Child-style host in this travesty of a tragedy, while trays of lady fingers -- supposedly made from real fingers -- are passed to the audience.

All of the histories are cobbled together into a football game; when Lear shows up, the ref announces, "A penalty marker is down. Fictional character on the field." And, contending that all of the comedies are basically the same formula, the trio narrates an omnibus comedy titled, "The Comedy of Two Well-Measured Gentlemen Lost in the Merry Wives of Venice on a Midsummer's Twelfth Night in Winter."

Shakespeare (abridged) began as an improvisation, and under Tony Tsendeas' direction, a spur-of-the-moment madcap air is maintained by Kingsland and especially Kinstle (whose credits include former Baltimore improv troupe the Flying Tongues). Marsh's performance feels studied at times, but not enough to slow things down.

The entire second act is devoted to Hamlet (complete with some thoroughly silly audience participation). Although less risible than the first act, there are bright spots, chief among them Kinstle reciting Hamlet's advice to the players to a handful of finger puppets.

In director Tsendeas' production, even the design elements -- especially the design elements -- are funny. Besides the finger puppets, property designer Liza Davies earns kudos for Titus' meat pie, whose crust is decorated with the face of one of his victims.

The most inspired design of all, however, is the opening, which features a video of Kinstle as a Masterpiece Theatre-type narrator. Anthony Scimonelli's clever video design enables Kinstle to step in and out of the screen, a feat that leads Marsh to make several frustrating attempts to join him on camera.

Denise Cumor's costume designs are also comical, from the phony cleavages for Kingsland's Juliet and Ophelia to bedsheet get-up worn by Hamlet's father's ghost. Alexandra Pappas' lighting, punctuated by Todd Mion's sound, further heightens the hilarity. And Lewis Shaw's fight direction scores a bona fide knockout -- particularly a Romeo and Juliet fracas in which Kingsland's head bobs like a punching bag.

There's a bit near the beginning when Kinstle becomes an evangelist for Shakespeare, preaching "the holy word of the Bard to the masses." It's a scene that fits perfectly in the Baltimore Shakespeare Festival's home, which happens to be a church. But then, this entire show is a nice fit for the company, which recognizes that the best way to honor Shakespeare is not to be stuffy and academic, but simply entertaining.

Razing the Bard
All Of Shakespeare's Plays Get Reworked In This Pithy Production
by Anna Ditkoff

The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (Abridged) | By Adam Long, Daniel Singer, and Jess Winfield | At the Baltimore Shakespeare Festival through Oct. 29

BALTIMORE SHAKESPEARE FESTIVAL'S The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (Abridged) is funnier than it has any right to be. It's an unrelentingly silly show filled with puke jokes and knees to the groin--and the assured cast makes it work.

Written by Adam Long, Daniel Singer, and Jess Winfield, the play follows three guys trying to get through the entire works of Shakespeare in one theatrical performance. The result is a mishmash of plays that has enough sly humor to amuse die-hard Bard fanatics and enough broad slapstick to give even non-English speakers reasons to laugh. But describing the play's goings-on in any detail is a bit tricky. The jokes are often hokey and overly broad, and some sound plain painful when written on the page--but it's a testament to how well the BSF pulls off this show that such jokes worked onstage.

BSF artistic director James Kinstle performs alongside Bolton Marsh and Johns Hopkins University graduate Ben Kingsland, whose entire family appeared to be in the audience on opening night. The actors perform under their first names onstage and have ample opportunity to improvise and inject current cultural references into their banter, some of which work better than others: Kinstle pummeling a George W. Bush mask-clad Kingsland is funnier than Kingsland trying to use Nicole Richie's possible eating disorder as a gag.

Along the way the trio performs Romeo and Juliet, imagines Titus Andronicus as a cooking show, and turns Othello into a Beastie Boys-ish rap. Shakespeare's histories are distilled into a football game, with an announcer calling the passing off of the crown and calling a penalty on the fictional King Lear. His comedies are turned into one play, an amusing gambit for people all too familiar with Shakespeare's continual returns to mistaken identities, women dressed as men, and everybody getting married in the end.

Director Tony Tsendeas, who also directed BSF's excellent 2004 production of Julius Caesar, helms this circus, adding bits of sly visual humor and fast pacing that gives the play its full-gallop energy. But it is the actors who make this confection so effective. Kinstle and Marsh have a deadpan confidence that sells even the silliest of shticks, and they feed off the audience wonderfully. During Hamlet, Marsh played beautifully off some incredibly eager audience participation courtesy of Kingsland's family. And do be prepared for audience participation. From my seat I got fake-puked on and handed a piece of "rapist head pie," which I assumed to be cranberry sauce but refrained from taste-testing.

Kingsland, however, lacked his more experienced co-stars' easy stage presence. He tended toward shrillness, serving as a foil for Kinstle and Marsh but also becoming rather irritating. When Marsh called Kingsland out on thinking that all Shakespeare's heroines are nothing more than bad wigs and puking on people, you side with Marsh a bit more than you're meant to. Still, Kingsland hit his stride in the trio's three rapid-fire renditions of Hamlet--one of which unfolded backward. Kingsland saying "Oob!" as the ghost of Hamlet's father actually made me laugh out loud.

BSF's production of the The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (Abridged) is good wacky fun, but one bit of caution. Despite the broad humor, it isn't really a kid-appropriate show: Juliet humps a pew to climax, and some decidedly dirty shadow puppets rate this play PG-13.

With daredevil speed and precision, three actors bring the entire Shakespeare canon to the stage. BALTIMORE SHAKESPEARE FESTIVAL PRESENTS THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE (ABRIDGED). All 37 works in under two hours! This is a tour de force of hi-jinx and hilarity!

If you've seen The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (abridged) before, you haven't seen it like this. If you haven't seen it before, start now preparing your mind to be blown all over the wall. Tackle football, stripper poles, regurgitation, flygirls, Dubya - all things one might not expect to see at a classical theater; unless, of course, the evening is spent at the Baltimore Shakespeare Festival's production of The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (Abridged.) Baltimore Shakespeare Festival Artistic Associate Tony Tsendeas directs this hyperactive missile. Its target? Those who know Shakespeare, those who don't know Shakespeare, and those who think they know Shakespeare. Festival Artistic Director James Kinstle* is joined onstage by strong, not-so-silent type Bolton Marsh* and not-so-strong, not-at-all-silent type Ben Kingsland. A rocket-propelled, slapstick look at all 37 of Shakespeare's plays (in less than two hours!), Complete Works is a rowdy, rambunctious, and sometimes randy fun-house trip through the Bard's work, from All's Well That Ends Well to Winter's Tale. The actors sweat, cry, and puke their way along, providing running commentary as they burn through the canon with more than a little help from the audience.

The result isn't exactly traditional. Othello is a rap, Titus Andronicus is run through a Julia Childs blender, and Sally Fields makes an appearance as a flying nun. Let audiences be forewarned: They will wave their arms in the air. They will be pulled onstage. They will (possibly) narrowly escape being hit by vomit. And they will laugh until everything hurts as our three heroes onstage zoom forwards, backwards(literally), and upside down through some of the greatest plays ever written in the English language.

*denotes member Actor's Equity Association