N.y. Theater Reviews

THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE (ABRIDGED)
Century Center for the Performing Arts

A long-running London hit making its third appearance in New York, this silly and satirical evening, running indefinitely, features three actors working their way through specially condensed versions of the Bard's plays (and even the sonnets) in just under two hours. Actually, while "Hamlet" is spoofed at great length, most of the other works are handled in quick sketches or brief asides, with the funniest being "Titus Andronicus" done as a television cooking show, "Othello" as a rap song and all of the history plays combined into one frantic football game. The three performers -- Peter Ackerman, Jeremy Shamos and David Turner -- deal with 75 characters, 100 props and dozens of costumes, and they handle their chores, which include quite a bit of audience interaction and ad-libbing, with comic skill and energy. While not everything in the show works, there are enough belly laughs to satisfy Shakespeare buffs and neophytes alike.

ROADSIDE
York Theatre Company

Only weeks before "The Fantasticks" finally calls it quits after four decades, this new musical by the team of Tom Jones (book and lyrics) and Harvey Schmidt (music) arrives in a similarly small-scaled production running through Dec. 23. Actually, it's not so new, considering that it is based on a 1930 play (written by Lynn Riggs, who also wrote the play on which "Oklahoma!" is based) and that the pair started working on it way back during the 1950s. The tale of a traveling tent show in the Old West and the burgeoning romance between the owner's rambunctious daughter and a fast-
talking cowboy, "Roadside" is a pleasant, innocuous musical that leaves your mind as soon as you leave the theater. Still, it has its compensations, including a melodic score and several engaging performances, especially by the powerfully voiced Julie Johnson and the crusty G.W. Bailey, the latter of whom is familiar from his appearances in the "Police Academy" films.

SPEAKING IN TONGUES
Gramercy Theatre

In a timely example of dramatic synergy, this 1996 play from Australian playwright Andrew Bovell (co-screenwriter of "Strictly Ballroom") arrives in New York at nearly the same time as "Lantana," the award-winning film adaptation starring Barbara Hershey and Anthony LaPaglia. Even more interestingly, what works superbly on film comes across as stilted and affected onstage. The tale of two married couples caught up in a web of extramarital affairs and a possible murder, "Speaking in Tongues," running through Jan. 20, uses a range of mannered devices, like having characters in different locales reciting the same dialogue in unison. Then the second act features the same performers playing entirely different characters, tangentially related to those in the first. It's all entirely confusing and irritating, though the evening is somewhat redeemed by the provocative dialogue and skillful performances by Kevin Anderson, Margaret Colin and Michel R. Gill.

TRUE LOVE

Zipper Theatre

This new work from playwright-provocateur Charles L. Mee is part of his "Love" trilogy of plays dealing with the relationship between the sexes, the other two of which also have been seen in New York this season. Utilizing and adapting elements of Plato's "Symposium," Euripides "Hippolytus" and Racine's "Phaedra," this absurdist extravaganza, set in a run-down gas station, concerns the disastrous results of the burgeoning sexual relationship between a beautiful woman -- abandoned by her husband -- and her teenage stepson. Performed to the musical accompaniment of a raucous four-piece rock band, the play, running through Jan. 20, also features such characters as a mechanic who likes to pleasure himself with the use of jumper cables, an accordion-playing drag queen and an attendant who describes, in detail, his molestation of his 3-year-old daughter. While the writing is often clunky and forced, the exuberance of the performers, the incredible realism of the set design and the novelty of the space -- it is performed in a new theater housed in a former zipper factory, with the audience lounging in car seats -- make for a unique theatergoing experience.

Frank Scheck