Shakespeare at warp speed in Sebastopol

<p>“Romeo and Juliet”: 12 minutes and done.</p><p>“Titus Andronicus,” presented as a cooking show: less than half that time.</p><p>At the rate they were burning through the Bard, it was a good thing the Sebastopol Fire Station was just around the corner.</p><p>All 37 of William Shakespeare's works were squeezed, jammed and crammed into one frenetic — and, judging from the audience's reactions, hilarious — 97-minute performance at Sebastopol's Ives Park Saturday.</p><p>“You lose a lot of calories,” said Dodds Delzell, one of three actors in the “The Complete Works of William Shakespeare, (abridged),” produced by Shakespeare Napa Valley/Sebastopol Shakespeare.</p><p>“They're going to do them all?” an apparently unsuspecting Dean Musgrove, of Santa Rosa, said before the show.</p><p>“Wow,” said his companion, Susan Jones, of Santa Rosa.</p><p>“Hamlet,” with three endings, took up the entire second act, but the tragedy “Coriolanus” warranted a single mention in the first.</p><p>“There's a reason for that,” said Jennifer King, the artistic director.</p><p>Close to curtain time — or at least the time that Delzell put down his plate of food and wandered up to the stage — Leah Jackson of Rohnert Park, a bride-to-be taking in the play with her bridesmaids, said, “I'm expecting to laugh, a lot.”</p><p>Soon she was. She happened to be a Shakespeare fan and had played Viola in “Twelth Night” once. </p><p>But, said another actor in the troupe, you didn't need to know Shakespeare to laugh with him.</p><p>“For people who know Shakespeare, it's hilarious,” said Chad Yarish, who played the female roles. “For people who don't know Shakespeare, it's hilarious.”</p><p>Indeed, a prologue of sorts touched on male pattern baldness, World War II, Viagra and Eva Peron and featured an iPhone.</p><p>From there, the play unrolled, like a tire speeding downhill, against a backdrop of spreading oaks, redwoods and fir with an audience of about 60 spread across the grass, many with picnics and wine. </p><p>“All the world's a stage...” (Jaques, in “As You Like It”) gave way to, “I don't want to kiss you, dude,” and returned to, “Oh, happy dagger, this is thy sheath” (Juliet, about to stab herself).</p><p>Backstage were tights, tunics, a mop and, just in case, a copy of “Shakespeare for Dummies.” </p><p>Onstage, a chest held three football jerseys (Joe Montana's from his Kansas City Chiefs' days, Steve Young's and Marshall Faulk's) that the troupe uses to retell Shakespeare's histories, from “King John” to “Henry VIII.”</p><p>“If you love Shakespeare, you'll like the show,” promised Dan Saski, the troupe's third member. “If you hate Shakespeare, you'll love it.”</p><p>Either way, there was no pressure at Ives Park Saturday.</p><p>“I always feel when I go to one” of Shakespears's plays “that I should have read the play beforehand, because I miss half if it,' said Walter Brode, of San Rafeal.</p><p>“Not tonight,” he said.</p><p>The Complete Works of William Shakespeare will stage at Ives Park again starting Thursday and extending through Sunday.</p><p>For good measure, Windsor Shakespeare on the Green is staging its own production of “The Complete Works,” to be held on consecutive weekends, starting Friday.</p>