G
CHEAP DATE NIGHT Tonight is Cheap Date Night at Woolly Mammoth Theatre, where you can get $20 tickets to the play “Gruesome Playground Injuries,” enjoy drinks, have your photo taken and meet the cast. Call 202-393-3939 and mention promotion code 868.
OnStage
Film history in a
nutshell by Lavanya Ramanathan
Reduced Shakespeare Company’s Aus- tin Tichenor and Reed Martin have built a franchise taming thousands of pages of heady literature into riotous stage shows that the masses want to digest: “Mac- beth,” “Anna Karenina” and the Bible all have been boiled down by these short- order cooks. (“We try to always get our facts right when we’re not getting them wrong on purpose,” Tichenor says.) But for the making of their latest re-
ductive comedy, “Completely Hollywood (abridged),” which opens Tuesday at the Kennedy Center, the pair shelved the books. Instead of poring over the great texts,
they watched every movie they could set their eyes on: “Avatar.” “Driving Miss Dai- sy.” “Basic Instinct.” You know, the classics. As disparate as the films seemed, pat- terns emerged. “Every new movie in Hol- lywood is just a combination of two old movies,” Martin says. “If you combine ‘Home Alone’ and ‘James Bond,’ you get ‘Spy Kids.’ ”
If someone in a film coughs, he’s going to die, adds Tichenor, who has lived in Los Angeles for 14 years and has picked up more than a few movie-biz insights. And no matter how groundbreaking “Cit- izen Kane” and “Apocalypse Now” are, does anyone really want to sit through them anymore? “The history of movies is a little more involved than people know about,” Tiche-
Dominic Conti, left, and Austin Tichenor reimagine “Driving Miss Daisy” in the Reduced Shakespeare Company’s “Completely Hollywood (abridged),” which opens Tuesday at the Kennedy Center.
KENNEDY CENTER
nor says. “People know about what they saw last weekend.”
Which is where “Completely Holly-
wood” and these self-proclaimed “Bad Boys of Abridgement” come in. In the show, the homages to the silver screen (and its cliches) fly; 197 movies (Tichenor calls it “a slightly arbitrary list”) get the Reduced treatment. The production clocks in at less than two hours — shorter than “Love, Actually.” In it, Reed, Tichenor and fellow Reduc- er Dominic Conti play a trio of screen- writing stooges each vying to have his screenplay turned into a film. But as it turns out, one of those cardinal rules of Hollywood applies: The scripts work bet- ter as one hilariously messy amalgam. In the end, “the plot of our movie is sort of a combination of ‘Unforgiven’
meets ‘Invasion of the Body Snatchers’ with a ton of ‘Sunset Boulevard’ thrown in,” Tichenor says. “And ‘Jerry Maguire.’ And ‘The Blair Witch Project.’ ” Reduced Shakespeare launched nearly 30 years ago with a 20-minute sendup of “Hamlet.” But with “Completely Holly- wood” the company has signaled that it is moving in a mildly more commercial di- rection. The writers’ newest show, “The Complete World of Sports,” required them to listen to a lot of sports talk radio. And on their Web site, they have posted a Reduced take on the first five seasons of “Lost,” which meant a whole lot of televi- sion watching. These more blatantly silly shows are, in
a way, in their blood. Martin is a trained clown who spent two years with Ringling Brothers. Ask him about his influences,
and he’ll cite Buster Keaton, Charlie Chaplin and Bugs Bunny — nary a Shake- spearean actor makes the list. Reduced Shakespeare is vaudeville, Ti- chenor explains, and aims to “satirize theater itself. We satirize the idea that theater is and must be a high falutin’, high culture event. We’re not high culture at all. We’re enormously populist.” “We just have this patina of respect-
ability because we have ‘Shakespeare’ in our name.”
ramanathanl@washpost.com Reduced Shakespeare Company
Kennedy Center, Terrace Theater, 200 F St. NW. 202-467-4600.
www.kennedy-center.org. Tuesday-July 11. $39-$49.
37
FINAL ACT FOR TAP GROUP
This weekend, the Silver Spring-based youth dance company Tappers With Attitude — a troupe known as much for its boundless energy as for its high-profile alum, singer and “Dancing With the Stars” runner-up Mya— will round up former members from its 19 seasons to perform what it is billing as its
Tappers With Attitude will feature dancers from the troupe’s 19 seasons in what are to be its final shows.
ENOCH CHAN
final shows. The company, the ensemble of the Tappers With Attitude dance school, has said financial concerns led to its putting performances on ice indefinitely. The shows this weekend should prove a fiery send-off. The school will continue to hold classes. Saturday at 8 p.m. and Sunday at 3 p.m. Atlas Performing Arts Center, 1333 H St. NE. 202-399-7993 or www.tapperswithattitude. org. $22; students and seniors, $15; 13 and younger, $10.
— Lavanya Ramanathan
THE WASHINGTON POST • FRIDAY, JUNE 18, 2010
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