Scott Hendrix

Review of SummerStage of Delafield

The venue is great and the people working there a...

The venue is great and the people working there are very friendly and lovely. My wife and I saw "The Complete Works of William Shakespeare: Abridged," at the Delafield Summer Stage on the play's closing night. I first saw it about 11 years ago in London; It's a three man show and (normally) very fast paced and utterly hilarious. The company shoves all 37 plays into 97 minutes. Unfortunately, the director- I presume this would have been a directorial decision- decided to force this weird bit into the middle where two of the three cast members left the stage for 10 minutes (at least), leaving the third guy up there alone. He did impressions, played a trumpet (badly) and in other ways killed time. Then there was an intermission (there was no intermission in the London version, it was fast paced, go, go, go the whole 97 minutes). When the actors came back, they did some ludicrous audience participation antics that didn't work for me at all, before finally getting down to business and getting funny again. The play ended well, with the last 15 minutes or so being hilarious, but there was a dead spot in the middle for about 25 minutes (not counting the intermission) that was painful to sit through. The director inexplicably turned a 97 minute play into two and a half hours (with intermission), killing the pacing of the original show and wrecking a good part of the fun. It's a shame, because the actors who performed were very talented, perfect for their parts, and spot on with their delivery. If this play had been delivered as the 97 minutes of fast-paced fun it was written to be, it would have been perfect.