madbaker | RSC post-mortem

All the Great Books Abridged was really, really, good.

This wasn't a surprise. It felt more "old-time RSC" though, which was. Let me 'splain... no, is too much. Let me sum up.

I've seen them live doing the original Faire gig back in the mid 80s. Also more recently in the mid & late 90s, doing Complete Word of God and American History. I missed the Millenium Musical.

Much as I enjoyed the God and American History shows, they felt... I dunno, ambitious. Like they were trying to push themselves further. Great Books was hysterically funny in a... comfortable sort of way. It wouldn't have seemed out of place right after Complete Shakespeare.

Anyway, musing over. Some sample bits:

Conjoining the Odyssey and the Iliad as "the Odd-Idioty". Psychedelic sitar music for the lotus-eaters, complete with Kirk monologue. Reed playing the cyclops bent over, with an eye on his (bald) head; the other two using dolls to show the scale. Oh, and Ulysses was dressed in a Superman outfit, with an Omega symbol on the chest.

Austin and Reed going off on a tangent, and Matt saying "Hey, you guys wrote this, do what ever you want." Then completely losing it for about five minutes and not being able to get back on track, at which point Austin riposted "Yeah, we wrote this. That's why we know where we are."

Summing up leftover books in one sentence, rapid-fire:
1984: "Don't trust the government."
Animal Farm: "Don't trust the pigs."
The Feminine Mystique: "Don't trust the pigs."
Alice B. Toklas: "No there there." Which played very well in San Francisco.

"action-packed" Walden - several minutes of sitting in a chair, fishing, swatting at flies. Followed by the Hemingway version (drinking, shooting a fish from the lake, shooting a bird from the sky...)

The Dating Game version of asking female writers questions; Jane Austin, George Eliot, and an audience member as Virginia Woolf. Lucky guy, he got a photo onstage with the cast. The winning couple got a trip to... Oakland!

Lastly, we all passed, so we got diplomas - "Successfully completed the RSC Remedial Literature Course. Please give the above named person all the respect and admiration they deserve, which is probably none."
(in fine print - "Not valid until signed by the instructors and accompanied by a receipt for the purchase of $25.00 worth of RSC merchandise." Well, we got ours signed, anyway. My grade was a J+.