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If it's true that brevity is the soul of wit, then the comic playwriting team of Adam Long, Reed Martin and Austin Tichenor seems to have taken that wisdom from Hamlet to heart--and put it into action. They're some of the scribes behind the Reduced Shakespeare Company, which for the past two decades has made a long story short out of everything from the Bard's plays to the entire Western literary canon.
Thus far, they've tackled The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (abridged), The History of America (abridged), All the Great Books (abridged) and of course, Western Civilization: The Complete Musical (abridged).
So it was probably inevitable that this trio of crack condensers would try their hand at summarizing the epic of Biblical proportions. Testaments Old and New are retold (or reimagined) in 90 minutes flat in The Bible: The Complete Word of God (abridged), which opens Nov. 20 at City Lights Theater Company in downtown San Jose. (If this speedy approach to the classics rings a bell, it's because City Lights has staged The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (abridged) and The History of America (abridged).)
This comic Cliff's Notes version of the Good Book offers an overview--more of a quick glimpse, really--of some of the most well-known stories from the Bible, with some very different takes on Adam and Eve, Moses, Abraham and Jesus.
Although Sunday school this definitely isn't, attendees might just get called on anyway, because a little bit of audience participation, along with some improvisation and lots of slapstick humor, is all part of the show.
The Bible: The Complete Word of God (abridged) stars Mike Inouye, Derek McCaw and City Lights' artistic director Tom Gough, and is directed by Ric Forrester.
City Lights Theater Company presents "The Bible: The Complete Word of God (abridged)" Nov. 20Dec. 27 at City Lights Theater, 529 S. Second St., San Jose. Tickets are $15$28. For more information, call 408.295.4200 or see www.cltc.org.
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