A Surefire Holiday Pick-me-up!

By CAROLINE CRAWFORD

A surefire holiday pick-me-up is Marin Theatre Company’s presentation of the Reduced Shakespeare Company production of The Complete History of Comedy (abridged),which opened Tuesday in Mill Valley.

The Reduced Shakespeare Company, founded in 1981, calls itself the RSC at times, hoping that perhaps people will take it for the Royal Shakespeare Company and come with great expectations. What they are likely to see is a three-player,30-minute Hamlet, which was the company’s first show at the Renaissance Pleasure Faire in Novato, or

The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (abridged), which opened at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival several years later.

Since then the current RSC writers-directors Reed Martin and Austin Tichenor have gone about abridging whatever theme takes their fancy--the Bible, American history, Western civilization--and have performed internationally in all eight of the RSC’s original productions. This isn’t theater for the attention-impaired--it goes by quickly, no repeats.

There isn’t a dull moment in The Complete History of Comedy. Martin and Tichenor are joined by loose-limbed, straight-faced Dominic Conti for a lively ninety minutes that might or might not include a lame joke or two--it’s hard to know, because when a bit falls flat the audience is scolded for being too half-witted to get the point. The audience is also put down for being too old to Twitter--you get the idea.

The trio are masters of distillation, of timing, of clowning. There is unabashed slapstick and the dark side of comedy is often touched upon. Among the skits is an illustrated list of the funniest people in history and the unfunniest, which includes Anthony Weiner and Harry Reid. They peddle an elixir of laughs, and they take on even the Supreme Court in an NPR episode featuring Nina Totenbag and melodies from “Sound of Music’’ (“How do you solve a problem like Scalia?”)

Less isn’t always more, but in the case of The Complete History of Comedy, the Reduced Shakespeare Company offers more than enough for a fully engaging evening of theater. The show runs at Marin Theatre Company through December 21.