The three British zanies (Adam Long, Reed Martin and Austin
Tichenor), who brought THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE (Abridged) to
the colonies, have lucked into a nifty cottage industry, abridging stuff.
They’ve even had the audacity to abridge our whole, long two hundred year
history!
THE COMPLETE HISTORY OF AMERICA (Abridged) is tearing up the
joint at ARTS AFTER HOURS through April 4th. It’s an irreverent send
up of our love affair with “manifest destiny,” invading the Middle
East and conspiracy theories…and I should point out, it’s being
directed by James Tallach, who is a Scot! Talk about conspiracies.
What’s more, I think there’s a definite link to another show…
and I don’t mind telling you it’s Hub Theatre’s LOOT (also written by a Brit).
In point of fact, one of the AFTER HOURS performers is married to someone in
the Hub production. The same mustache appears in both plays and both employ
chocolate money to bribe the audience. Coincidence? I think not.
Tallach’s wild and wooly production has three game actors to
lead us in stitches (well, mostly in groans) through the Revolutionary “shot
heard round the world” War (which they link cleverly to the lone gunman
theory), through the Civil War, the French and Indian War, the War of 1812, two
World Wars, the Korean Conflict, the Vietnam War (which wasn’t a declared war)
to the Gulf fiascos…and beyond. I can hardly keep up with our military actions.
(If it’s Tuesday, we must be invading another -Stan.) It’s beyond me how the
play’s authors can keep up.
Cameron Gosselin, Dan Prior and Casey Tucker maneuver with
aplomb in and out of costumes, accents, genders even, in service of the
deliriously lame humor. And they sing terrific triple harmony à la The Andrews
Sisters in The Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy! It’s a romp. Well, some of it
is a crawl but mostly it’s just plain silly…Oh, and you’ll learn something
about history, to boot!
