Abridged Too Far? Less Is Hilariously More, When Reduced Shakespeare Company Takes on “All the Great Books” This October at Monmouth U!

The Center for the Arts at Monmouth University has announced that tickets are on sale now for an October 12, 2017 appearance by the happy-go-lucky Hamlets of The Reduced Shakespeare Company, delivering their hit show “All the Great Books (abridged)” as part of the 2017-18 Performing Arts Series at Monmouth.

Hosted inside the refurbished Pollak Theatre, the 7:30 p.m. presentation brings to the flagship stage at Monmouth the celebrated company behind “The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (abridged),” the whirlwind, world-wide sensation that’s broken box office records from London’s West End to Washington, D.C. and Washington state. Continuing in the spirit of that no-holds-Bard grapple with Mr. Shakespeare’s most frantic folio, a trio of “cultural guerrillas” tears through a groaning bookshelf of masterworks by history’s best-known authors and thinkers – digesting all the parts you’ve been meaning to get around to, and serving them up with an abandon that’s truly off the Cliff Notes.

Conceived by RSC co-founder Austin Tichenor with longtime company member Reed Martin – and performed by a well-broken-in touring troupe of Reduced Shakespeare veterans – “Books” is designed for the benefit of those who are “confused by Confucius” and “thrown by Thoreau.” Delivering an hour and a half of “Little Dickens,” “Short Longfellow” and “Reduced Proust,” the multi-tasking actors employ these weighty volumes of literary canon fodder as fuel for a library-ladder locomotive ride, put forth in the signature supercharged style of such Reduced rave-ups as “The Complete History of America (abridged)” and “The Bible (abridged).”

Tickets, priced at $35 and $45, can be reserved right now for the October 12 evening with the Reduced Shakespeare Company, by calling the Monmouth University Performing Arts Box Office at 732-263-6889, or visiting www.monmouth.edu/mca. Stay tuned for news on other upcoming events in the Performing Arts Series, including LA Theatreworks (February 8, 2018) and Carolyn Dorfman Dance (February 25, 2018), and enjoy the show – but please, please, refrain from using “All the Great Books (abridged)” as your sole source of reference for college Lit classes or cocktail-party conversation.