If you’re a fan of movies or whacky comedy — better still, if you’re a fan of movies and whacky comedy — you’ll appreciate the irreverent, satiric humor of “Completely Hollywood (abridged),” a production of the Reduced Shakespeare Company at the Kennedy Center. The RSC, which has in the past presented abridged versions of Shakespeare, of the Bible and of American history, now sets its sights on that creator of the “ultimate weapons of mass distraction”: Hollywood.
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“Completely Hollywood (abridged)”
Where: Terrace Theatre, Kennedy Center, 2700 F St. NW
When: 7:30 p.m. Tuesday-Sunday; 2 p.m. Saturday and Sunday; through July 11
Info: $39 to $49; 202-467-4600; kennedy-center.org
It would be impossible to count all the films the show references, because they cascade over the stage all too quickly. But the RSC claims that in its rapid-fire review, the show covers 175 of America’s greatest films from Hollywood’s more than 100-year history. If all they did was lift lines from various famous films and string them together (which they do at one point) the potential for silliness would be obvious: “Don’t you see, it all happened one night … it was all quiet on the Western Front ….” and so on. But the majority of the show is much more inventive than that, as three congenial and talented actors (Dominic Conti, Reed Martin and Austin Tichenor) create unlikely collisions of characters, plots, ideas and special effects.
The first act consists of a semieducational tour through the basic steps of cinematic creation, asking: How many movie plots are there, after all? Can movies be summed up in a tagline? What is more important, plot or image? In answer to this last question, Conti, who is something of an acrobat, acts out inspired racing images from “Marathon Man,” “Memento” and “Chariots of Fire.”
As they investigate the basics of filmmaking, Conti, Martin and Tichenor suggest the airy foundation upon which Tinseltown is built. At the end of Act I, the three men, each of whom has a script to produce, decide to put their scripts together into one superstory.
Act II is more energized than Act I and it involves some entertaining audience participation. Working their way through every genre known to main-stream moviedom, Tichenor, Martin and Conti set out to create the perfect movie, involving a little bit of the classic western, sci-fi, terror and romance movie.
The set for “Completely Hollywood (abridged)” is simple: Three ceiling-to-floor banners made to look like film-strips are covered with scenes from everything from “Gone With the Wind” to “The Wizard of Oz.” The show contains lots of quick costume changes and the banners provide a place for the actors to disappear and reappear seconds later wearing various wigs, skirts, hats, etc.
Although these three comics are clever, they sometimes dip into rather hackneyed jokes. There are the usual “Al Gore-is-boring,” “Keanu Reeves-can’t-act” and “Tom Cruise-is-short” jokes. Serious or frivolous, virtually everyone associated with Hollywood comes in for a ribbing.
Ironically, although they complain that every new movie is just a remake of two old movies, the RSC guys, with their lush bombardment of cinematic material — and the rich movie music that surrounds the show (arranged by Jon Weber) — underline one reason why we really love the movies: they’re all so different, one from another. It’s just the experience of sitting in the dark that’s the same. In the end, “Completely Hollywood” adds up to a healthy laugh at our national passion for the silver screen.
