The Complete Works of Shakespeare, By Brianna Badley

Madison Fairchild and Jeffrey Baxter are current Seattle Lutheran High School seniors, as well as skilled theater connoisseurs, and have recently performed “The Complete Works of Shakespeare, Abridged” for their senior project and donated the proceeds of the play to a women’s shelter called Re:Novo House. Garth Ball, a Seattle Lutheran alum, also participated in this production in order to meet the required number of cast members. I was not surprised that Maddie and Jeffrey chose to perform “The Complete Works,” because they are the opposite of boring.

I enjoyed this play. It was amusing, and I liked how they changed characters smoothly. They addressed us (the audience) and called themselves by their own names while still maintaining their scripted character roles. In this play they performed all of Shakespeare’s works. I emphasize the word performed because for the more famous plays they performed abbreviated versions of the plays, but for more obscure ones they acted a few minutes of it, interpreted it via a brief cooking show or a brief game of football, or just mentioned the name. It was hilarious, especially when they gender-swapped Romeo and Juliet, and when Jeffrey went on an off-script mental breakdown when confronted with the terrible possibility of performing ”Hamlet.”  Another beautifully hysterical moment occurred when Maddie asked some audience members to do and say various things while waiting for Jeffrey to recuperate from his breakdown. Audience participation is always a good thing to see in plays, due to its rarity. There were a few line fumbles, but they were few and far between, and in my opinion enhanced the play’s humor. It was a very good play and I am impressed that they did all by themselves. I regret not going to more than one performance.