Oxford always seems to reach Shakespeare saturation point in the Summer, so it is welcome that one company has come to supply the city's theatre-goers with an antidote. Fast-paced, irreverent and at times side-splittingly funny, the Reduced Shakespeare Company's Complete Works of William Shakespeare (Abridged) takes the works of the bard and runs with them, using them as a framework upon which to hang the troupe's own brand of theatrical mayhem.

Workshy scholars, hoping to use the show as a means of brushing their Shakespeare without having to sit through all 37 plays will be disappointed. The comedies - being all essentially the same, and having far less comic potential than the tragedies - are mixed together into one short mess of identical twins, cross-dressing and magic-induced passion. King Lear is disqualified from an American Football game after only the briefest of appearances. And poor old Coriolanus is only mentioned in passing, and that with a snigger at the second half of his name.

In fact, when they sat down to write their show, the RSC probably never had any intention of actually whizzing through the plot of all 37 of Shakespeare's plays. Rather, they wanted to use the works of the world's most famous playwright as a pretext for a show which is funny in its own right - expanding on those plays which they found most amusing (and the fact that one of these chosen plays is the grisly Titus Andronicus should give some idea of the level of their humour); exploding some of the pretentions and myths of the theatre; and generally allowing the whole to degenerate into endearing, hilarious slap-stick. If parts of the show do seem unnecessarily and almost uncomfortably chaotic, as a whole the effect is very well judged; the audience is compelled to participate, but not too much; and the excitement levels, kept high over the interval break by the looming question of whether Hamlet would be or not be, reached an hilarious climax with a sub-two minute speed rendition of the Prince of Denmark.

Some (myself included), might be left feeling slightly cheated at not finding out exactly what happens in King John or The Two Noble Kinsmen - but we shall just have to look them up in a book. For others, this is simply entertainment, and very clever and funny entertainment at that.

Matthew Rogers, 30 / 7 / 01