Tag: Kiran Raywilliams

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The Long and the short of The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (Abridged) with Reduced Shakespeare Company

Adam Long: Reduced Shakespeare Company co-founder and director

THE new version of The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (Abridged), rebooted and re-imagined for the 30th anniversary UK tour, is squeezing into York Theatre Royal from July 7 to 11.

After nine years at the Criterion Theatre in London’s West End, two television specials and performances in more than 20 countries, the Reduced Shakespeare Company brings this updated and reinvented classic comedy to a new generation of audiences as Efé Agwele, Woogie Jung, Tom Pavey and understudy Kiran Raywilliams take a rollercoaster ride through all 37 of the Bard’s plays.

Presented by The Theatre Chipping Norton and Selladoor Worldwide, through special arrangement with Music Theatre International, the 2026 version is written by director Adam Long and fellow Californian original writers and founder members Daniel Singer and Jess Winfield, who first teamed up 45 years ago when Adam was an accountant for an anti-nuclear political action committee, Daniel, a graphic artist in Santa Rosa and Jess, a lawyer in Santa Cruz.

Here come Hamlet told backwards, a micro-condensed Othello scored to a ukulele, a carnage-filled Titus Andronicus, presented as a YouTube cookery tutorial, and the History Plays as a manic football game between kings (although King Lear is disqualified for being fictional).

“We started touring it here in 1995 – 31 years go – and in the first year we did it at this incredibly beautiful theatre in York,” recalls Adam. “We did a show in Leeds and then there was a three-day gap before York, and we got this phone-call saying, ‘could we do a show in Plymouth in between?’, so we drove all the way down to Plymouth and back again!”

The Reduced Shakespeare Company (RSC) had begun as a street theatre troupe in San Francisco Bay in the 1980s, busking 15-minute versions of Romeo And Juliet and Hamlet to earn a living.

Most of the performances were at ‘Renaissance Faires’ where the RSC often had to share the stage with belly dancers and sheep. The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (Abridged) was first performed at the Edinburgh Fringe in 1987, at 10am in a church basement.

From there, the RSC was invited to perform in Montreal, Tokyo, New York and London, and the rest is history, but what first drew Long and co to Shakespeare?

“I’m from California, where we were not forced to study it in the same way as you are here, so our love of Shakespeare came from seeing it live,” says Adam. “I loved Bugs Bunny and The Marx Brothers too and in my life they’re intertwined.”

The comedy style emerged from condensing the essentials of each play. “It comes down to what’s the plot and who are the characters? Like Romeo And Juliet is two teenagers high on hormones who make some bad decisions, and if that was on Netflix, you’d definitely watch it!” says Adam, who has lived in London for 35 years.

The Reduced Shakespeare Company’s 2026 tour cast for The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (Abridged): understudy Kiran Raywilliams, left, Efe Agwele, Woogie Jung and Tom Pavey, front

“We figured Romeo And Juliet was the play most people knew, along with Hamlet, so we book-end the show with those two plays. Romeo And Juliet gets a healthy 15 minutes; it’s like Romeo And Juliet shot out of a cannon: high-speed drama.

“We then highlight plays they’re less familiar with, like Titus Andronicus, the most gory play Shakespeare wrote – and one of the most gory plays I’ve encountered. It’s more gory than all Quentin Tarantino’s films condensed into one, so we devote only two minutes to it in the form of a YouTube cooking tutorial by Titus Andronicus.”

The Reduced Shakespeare Company version of Hamlet developed as the show did likewise. “When we got to the point where Ophelia killed herself, we thought it would be interesting to do a Freudian analysis, acting out her psyche, with audience involvement, and the response was so good, we had to do an encore, where we did Hamlet in only 30 seconds,” says Adam.

“Demands came for another encore, so we did it in five seconds. Then we were all just sitting in the pub, thinking about what more we would do with it, and Jess, I think, suggested: ‘what if we were to do it backwards, like in a parlour game?’.”

Hamlet in reverse is now the staple final act of the show, but which plays were the hardest to adapt? “The Histories, because they’re not as funny as the tragedies, and they’re also not as well known,” says Adam.

“So we thought, ‘how do we take all the Histories and condense them into something that will be entertaining for the audience?’. It’s like a football game with the crown being passed from king to king and gradually we got it down to 90 seconds.”

Asked to pick a favourite Shakespeare play, Adam says: “I know it’s a predictable answer, but I do love Hamlet. I think that if I was a playwright and it was the only play I wrote, I would feel it was a job well done without having to write another 36 plays!”

The Reduced Shakespeare Company in The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (Abridged), York Theatre Royal, July 7 to 11, 7.30pm plus 2pm Thursday and 2.30pm Saturday matinees. Box office: 01904 623568 or yorktheatreroyal.co.uk Age guidance: Ten plus. Post-show discussion on July 8.

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REVIEW: Run, Rebel, Pilot Theatre, on the run at York Theatre Royal until Saturday ****

Simran Kular’s Ruby, left, and Jessica Kaur’s Amber in Pilot Theatre’s Run, Rebel. Picture: Pamela Raith

Pilot Theatre in Run, Rebel, York Theatre Royal, March 10 at 1pm and 7pm; March 11, 2pm. Box office: 01904 623568 or yorktheatreroyal.co.uk.

RUN, Rebel has only a short run in York, more of a sprint than a marathon.

However, Pilot Theatre’s premiere is a co-production with regular partners York Theatre Royal, Belgrade Theatre, Coventry, Derby Theatre and Mercury Theatre, Colchester, ensuring a longer stretch across the theatre canvas for actress, children’s author, screenwriter and playwright Manjeet Mann’s adaptation of her 2020 debut verse novel.

Such has been the impact of Pilot’s stage versions of children’s and young adults’ books The Bone Sparrow, Noughts & Crosses and Crongton Knights that Mann was resolute in wanting the York company to mount the premiere.

Good decision, Manjeet! In return, she has delivered a superb, serious, searing drama that marries her knowledge of stage craft as an actress to how best to present words for maximum impact on stage under Tessa Walker’s astute direction (a Walker directing a play full of running!).

As the title would suggest, both running and rebellion feature, along with a third ‘R’, revolution. Midlands schoolgirl Amber Rai (Jessica Kaur), aged 15, is trapped by her Punjabi family’s rules (or more particularly her heavy-drinking father Harbans’ intransigence); their expectations (arranged marriage, like her sister Ruby (Simran Kular) and her own fears (represented in video designer Daniel Denton’s imagery of “The Man” and cast members cutting roses in bloom).

Jessica Kaur’s Amber and Pushpinder Chani’s Harbans in Run, Rebel

At the heart of Debbie Duru’s set is what looks like the Rowntree Park skateboard park, rising at both ends, but serving as a running track and symbolic of uphill struggles, topped by metal fencing. This open-plan design facilitates a smooth transition from outdoor to indoor, from school playground to schoolroom to house interior.

Niraj Chag’s compositions add to the Punjabi flavour, while Denton’s ever-changing video backdrop combines street photography with playful schoolroom scrawls, charting the path to revolution encouraged by Amber’s history teacher and imagery of Amber’s mother Surinder (Asha Kingsley) learning the alphabet and English language (leading to a shopping list), along with the aforementioned sinister face in close-up.

Physical theatre is as crucial to Run, Rebel as Mann’s dialogue (where her use of repetition works wonderfully), and significantly the cast is always in view, whether central to a scene or watching from the sides. Pushpinder Chani’s threatening, abusive Harbans, for example, feels ever present.

Physicality is double-edged for Amber. On the one hand, her prowess at running (to a national championship standard) gives her a sense of freedom, but her father threatens to kill her if she goes against his refusal to let her race.

Volume down, telly off, not even five minutes to themselves for mother and daughters when the drunk Harbans staggers through the door demanding his supper. Gradually, however, the seeds of revolution are sown not only by Amer, but by Surinder too, whether hiding her job earnings from him or finding support to break free when needing an escape.

Keep on running: Tessa Walker’s cast is always on the move in Run, Rebel

The school world is equally well drawn by Mann, both in Amber’s friendship complications and misunderstandings with David (Kiran Raywilliams) and Tara (Hannah Millward), and in Amber taking out her jealous teenage frustrations by bullying a classmate (Kular again). Chani’s hip History teacher will have everyone wishing he was their teacher too.

Suitable for age ten plus, Run, Rebel carries the warning of containing violence, domestic violence, alcoholism, bullying and discrimination, and it handles such subject matter with righteous ire, in the tradition of a Sixties’ kitchen-sink drama, but also with a deep understanding of different cultures. Mann finds room for flinty humour too, in the school banter and the mother-and-daughter relationships, and hope burns brightly as the fires of revolution spark up.

Walker’s thrilling, moving, uplifting production even revels in a burst of dancing as if from a Bollywood movie climax, when teenage love is a’fluttering too. Kuldip Singh-Barmi’s movement direction matches the physical force of the language, capturing the release of running as much as the running into trouble.

Walker’s cast does Run, Rebel proud, a six of the best led by Kaur’s troubled yet talented Amber, who is not a conventional gilded school sports hero, but a warts-and-all teenager, difficult for even her friends to love at times. Kaur captures all that, putting her in the running for a 2023 Hutch Award. And what better week to present Run, Rebel than in York International Women’s Week.