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Wednesday November 21, 2007

‘Abridged’ means hilarious in this dizzying Bible farce

by joe eskenazi
staff writer

The Reduced Shakespeare Company believes the Bible should be taken literally — as they like to boast, they literally took theirs from a hotel room.

And if you’ve always wanted to see the Great Flood reenacted on stage by actors firing Super Soaker water guns into the crowd, then “The Bible: The Complete Word of God (Abridged)” is the play to quench your desires. A word to the wise: Don’t wear silk.

In a nutshell, the RSC (a rotating group of Shakespearian comedians — the night I saw the play it was Dominic Conti, Reed Martin and Austin Tichenor) has reduced both the Hebrew and Christian Bibles to a series of Looney Tunes-like comedic vignettes stuffed with more jokes than any comedy show since “Mystery Science Theater 3000.” At 90 minutes, “The Bible” may well contain 200 jokes.

Here’s a sample:

n God: “Abraham, what would you give me to ensure you and your descendants live in Canaan forever?”

Abraham: “Anything, Lord!”

God: “Good. Give me the foreskin of your penis.”

n “This is a portion of the book of St. Jude, who was Jesus’ servant — and could also take a sad song and make it better.”

And, unlike the Torah, the RSC’s script is by no means set in stone. Topical references to “four more years of Gavin Newsom,” 58,000 gallons of fuel in the Bay and the moribund 49ers peppered the show.

The show’s unpredictability may be its greatest asset. When latecomers ducked into the theater during the play’s opening act, the trio immediately went off-script, leapt into the stands and humiliated the tardy attendees but good.

“Ladies and gentlemen, it’s the lost tribes of Israel!” they shouted.

They then broke the fourth wall about as literally as you can by plopping down next to the late-arriving group and patiently asking, “So, what happened?” before twisting the dagger with the quip, “Well, now that we’re down here, is there anything we can get you — like a watch?”

Later, the RSC gave everyone, not just latecomers, a chance to literally make asses (and pigs and cats) of themselves during a Noah’s Ark sing-a-long. The sight of theatergoers plucked from their plush seats and made to don a pig’s snout and oink loudly from up on stage isn’t exactly cerebral theater. But it sure is funny.

Whether it’s the combustible mix of highbrow and lowbrow, or men portraying Salome and Eve, the RSC could be as close as a modern audience can get to experiencing a performance the way a Shakespearian troupe might have executed it when the Bard was around.

In Conti, Martin, Tichenor and the rest of the RSC stable, we have a lightning-witted group of actors who have at least half a dozen “Reduced” plays committed to memory and the ability to go off-book and deal with vocal, boisterous audiences. If you don’t mind being squirted by the players, it can be exhilarating.

Whatever you think of the Bible, it’s great material. Or, as the players put it, “The greatest story ever accepted as fact.”

“The Bible: The Complete Word of God (Abridged)” plays through Jan. 6 at the Marines

Memorial Theatre, 609 Sutter St., S.F.

Tickets: $29-$60. Information: (415) 771-6900

or www.ticketmaster.com.

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