Bard For Life

It may be sacrilegious to say, but nobody has time for Shakespeare these days; much better to get all 37 plays into roughly 90 minutes as The Complete Works Of William Shakespeare (Abridged) – TCWOWSA for the sake, appropriately, of brevity – manages to do. Ironically enough, TCWOWSA has proved a piece of theatre with resounding longevity; it played for nine straight years after premiering in London and has been constantly toured since.

Comedian Damian Callinan, who stars alongside Tim Overton and Nic English in the latest production of TCWOWSA, is himself a veteran of this piece of Shakespeare on speed, having previously toured the show in four separate productions. In a previous life Callinan was a drama teacher, a career path abandoned in favour of stand-up comedy. Callinan has since had his fingers in pretty much every pie available for a comedian: stand-up, kids' shows, corporate gigs, educational comedy, theatre and TV stints (including Rove and Spicks And Specks).

Straight into Bard-related queries, asked whether Adam Hills and Rove McManus are secretly engaged in a Shakespearean Hamlet-like battle over the Prince of TV crown, Callinan disappointingly says no. “Sadly, they are genuinely nice guys,” he says. “I know Adam better than I know Rove… I've toured with Adam and I've stayed with him at his house in London. He gives up his bed to you, he cooks you breakfast, he's just annoying.” How awful.

Finally allowed to address real Shakespeare, Callinan explains of TCWOWSA, “Essentially it's three actors playing themselves… trying to get through Shakespeare's canon as quickly as possible. It's three slackers just trying to do everything they can to get it over and done with. There's three of us playing slightly different actor types: Nic English plays the scholarly actor type; Tim Overton plays the clownish guy who… does all the female roles; I play the comedy man – the stand-up, really, who gets left on stage to clean up the mess.”

Shakespeare's Dutch prince Hamlet is undoubtedly the most coveted role in theatre; manage to land the role and pull it off and you can pretty much condense your résumé to two words: “played Hamlet”.  “Obviously,” says Callinan, “the actor type gets to play Hamlet… the first half is just us ripping through it and then we realise that we may have finished early, and then Nic discovers that we haven't done Hamlet… The second half is entirely Hamlet. You'd be surprised how many different ways it gets done.”