The opening night of The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (Abridged), performed by Hold Thy Peace on Thursday, had audiences rolling in their seats with laughter throughout the entire play.

Squeezing every single one of Shakespeare’s 37 plays into an hour-and-a-half, the production included a great deal of audience interaction, the modern mixed with the period, many double entendres and some phallic jokes.

The witty banter flew fast and furious, but, while much of it was funny, some of it was hard to catch.

When the director, Sarian Holt ’15, was asked how she would describe Shakespeare (Abridged), she responded in an interview with the Justice, “I kind of like to describe it as a fifth grader’s book report on Shakespeare. … It highlights the tropes, the important bits, [and] why Shakespeare’s still relevant and sort of is just like an everyman’s explanation of Shakespeare.” Each scene featured three members of the 11-person cast.

The show started with actress Missy Kintish ’17 introducing the play, telling the audience what they were about to see in the most comedic way possible.

The first of Shakespeare’s plays parodied was Romeo and Juliet; the play had the second largest amount of stage time.

The three actors ran around playing about five different roles, jumping in and out of character. Riely Allen ’18 played Juliet while wearing an awful wig.

The actors would stop in the middle of a scene to ask questions about it, make jokes and interact with the audience. This proved to be the theme for the rest of the play.

The play mixed the modern with the Shakespearean at every turn. The costumes, according to ensemble member Sara Kenney ’18, followed the original costumes used in Reduced Shakespeare’s (the company with the rights to the play) version of the play. The actors wore period shirts and trousers with fun colored tights, tube socks and Converse sneakers.

Titus Andronicus was performed as a cooking show, Othello was a rap, and Shakespeare’s histories were all covered in the form of a football game. The actors also used phones as props throughout the performance, and Disneyland was mentioned at least twice.

The whole second half of the play featured Hamlet. When Hamlet, played by Raphael Stigliano ’18, got to the “To be or not to be” speech, all the actors on stage paused to discuss why Hamlet and the other characters feel and act the way they do and then turned to the audience for an interactive segment.

Two members of the audience were brought up onto the stage and told to do certain tasks, and the rest of the audience was instructed to yell out certain phrases when prompted.

The audience seemed to be having a blast, and volunteers could hardly say the phrases they were supposed to through their laughter. Then the cast got back to performing Hamlet, eventually using brightly colored foam swords for the duel scene.

When asked in an interview with the Justice why she wanted to produce Shakespeare (Abridged), Holt said, “I thought it would be a good way for [Hold Thy Peace] to branch out.”

She continued on and said, “We’ve sort of been trying to figure out a way to get more people to come see the shows, because Shakespeare tends to have that stigma of being boring or, like, too high-brow for people to relax and enjoy.”

Holt continued and said, “I figured this would be a good way to show the campus that Shakespeare could be cool.”

When asked if there was any improvisation in the production process or in the performances, ensemble member Andrew Agress ’17 commented, “We want you to think that there is.”

They did a good job with this, because an unknowing audience member might actually have walked in and thought this was an improv play, when, in fact, it was all choreographed.

The show was fun, relaxing and hysterical, though it may have been difficult for people who weren’t well versed in Shakespeare to follow along at points.

Audience member Miriam Sokolow ’15 said in an interview with the Justice, “This is a play where you kind of had to be in the know.”

On most of the jokes and references in the play, audience member Dina Kritz ’16 said in an interview with the Justice, “I could catch most of them, but I think someone who didn’t know Shakespeare that well would’ve had trouble.”

Nonetheless, there were numerous points anyone would understand and find funny. Sokolow said, “They were really good at the physical humor.”

Ensemble member Ellie McKnight ’18 said, “Comedies are harder, because you don’t know what people will laugh at.” Holt said about her actors, “I let them bring out their own craziness when rehearsing.”

The Complete Works of Shakespeare (Abridged) was fun, loose, crazy and a great way to relax after a full day of classes.