For a troupe that prides itself on concision, the Reduced Shakespeare Company has earned a colossal number of good words. It's also refreshing to know that the globetrotting band is as fresh as ever and can still earn a new wave of accolades. The American premiere of the company's latest foray, Completely Hollywood (abridged), is witty and wonderful, wowing Pittsburgh with its skillful skewering of American cinema.
The show is a patchwork of advice to aspiring filmmakers (presented as a 12-step tutorial) peppered with the cheapest and silliest sight gags in the book. Much like in the company's first production, The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (abridged), the first act is mildly educational, exploring the many weird and sometimes grotesque aspects of the U.S. movie mill; the second act lets loose the instruction, as a trio makes a manic attempt to create the perfect Hollywood film.
In short (as it were), Dominic Conti, Reed Martin, and Austin Tichenor are some of the best fast-talking funnymen in the business, but their greatest virtue is that they strike a strong balance: Conti is a springy, wiry nerd; Martin is an all-business straight man; and Tichenor is a more traditional character actor whose brain is clearly inhabited by a hundred competing personalities that all emerge in perfectly timed tandem. Tichenor plays the show's most coveted roles, with Conti coming in a close second and Martin anchoring it all with a kind of paternal reserve.
The Reduced Shakespeare Company has run the risk of becoming a theatrical franchise that revives the same comic scheme for everything it does, from The Bible: The Complete Word of God (abridged) to All the Great Books (abridged) to Western Civilization: The Complete Musical (abridged). What distinguishes Completely Hollywood (abridged) from the others is its slightly bitter taste: It's clear that none of these men care for Hollywood culture or cliché-addled blockbusters. In a way it's tragic that the boom in new cinema inspired by Sundance and the like hasn't inspired them; they're still stuck in the ultraviolent, ultra-redundant '90s. They decline to mention today's army of small-budget directors or the collapsing summer box office that suggests the public's discontent.
The satire is solid -- venturing into politics and including tailor-made Pittsburgh references -- but for all the pop-culture allusions, from Charlie Chaplin to The Matrix, the script seems slightly out of touch. Or maybe they don't trust the taste of their audience.
Completely Hollywood (abridged) runs March 2-April 2 at Pittsburgh Public Theater's O'Reilly Theater, 621 Penn Ave., Pittsburgh. Tickets: (412) 316-1600. Website: www.ppt.org.