The Complete History of Comedy (Abridged)

Saturday, April 08, 2023 @ 8:00pm

McCarter Theatre Center (Matthews Theater)
91 University Place, Princeton, NJ 08540

The Complete History of Comedy (abridged) answers the fundamental questions:

• Which is the least funny nationality? Which is the funniest? Why did the former try to exterminate the latter?


• How do critics describe everything in a way to make it sound unfunny? (“First of all, the premise is weak. No one would ever believe that a baseball team would actually have a first baseman named “Who.”)


• Why, in fact, did the chicken cross the road?

Tickets to The Complete History of Comedy (abridged) are far more affordable than tickets to an amusement park, but you’ll come away with the same feeling of nausea and motion sickness. From cavemen telling “Rock Rock” jokes to Will Smith upset at Chris Rock’s jokes and everything in-between, the bad boys of abridgement leave no joke untold as they deconstruct the entire history of comedy in 90 rollicking minutes.

They’ve skewered history, the Bible and the world’s most celebrated playwright. Now, the Reduced Shakespeare Company tackles the subject it was born to reduce. From the high-brow to the low, The Complete History of Comedy (abridged) covers comedy through the ages, from Aristophanes and Shakespeare and Moliere (Is Moliere funny? Why not?) to Vaudeville and Charlie Chaplin to The Daily Show and Anthony Weiner.

Called a “trio of Modern Marx Brothers” by the Boston Herald and “intellectual vaudeville” by the New York Times, The Reduced Shakespeare Company (RSC) is a touring American comedy troupe that performs fast-paced, seemingly improvisational condensations of huge topics. They hold the record for the longest running comedies in the history of London’s West End as three of its shows ran in repertory at the Criterion Theatre in Piccadilly Circus for almost ten years. Known as the “Bad Boys of Abridgement,” the RSC has performed at the White House, Lincoln Center, Off-Broadway, the Kennedy Center, and Montreal’s famed Just For Laughs Festival, as well as touring the UK, Belgium, The Netherlands, Australia, New Zealand, Japan, China, Singapore, Barbados, Bermuda, Israel, Qatar, and Ireland. The Reduced Shakespeare Company is heard frequently on both NPR and the BBC.