In the twinkling of an eye

There are no sacred cows for the Reduced Shakespeare Company They've abridged Shakespeare and Wagner's `Ring' - now they're giving the Bible the 100-minute treatment.

`We've found this island to be full of godless heathens. We're doing the Bible so that they can get a little bit of true religion back in their lives, and go away infused with the Holy Spirit."

Adam Long, co-founder of the Reduced Shakespeare Company, may have his humorous tongue firmly in his Californian cheek, but there is no denying that with the arrival in the West End of the RSC's latest offering - The Bible: the Complete Word of God (abridged) - they are bringing the Good Book to one of the most godless countries in the world, where Genesis means Phil Collins and Revelations come in the Sunday tabloids. The Bible will be of little benefit, though, to those seeking enlightenment, any more than the company's Complete Works of William Shakespeare (abridged) will assist A-level revision.

With roots in street performance and circus clowning, the Reduced Shakespeare Company are more of a theatrical insurgency force than a company of actors. When it comes to the Bard, their performance erupts across the proscenium arch, dragging the audience into the heart of the high-velocity action. These are the edited highlights: a cultural Match of the Day featuring an Othello rap, Titus Andronicus as a cookery programme, and the fastest performance of Hamlet ever, all wrapped up in a lot of shouting, slapstick and the sort of groan-inducing jokes which one might expect from sneaker- clad Californians playing up to their stereotype. The carefully rehearsed anarchy and chaos reflect both too much time spent hanging around with street jugglers and an early fascination with the Marx Brothers. In talking about the roots of the RSC style, Long sums it up very neatly: "We grew up watching Bugs Bunny cartoons, so any time we try to perform anything it takes on the character of a Bugs Bunny cartoon. If Moses bears a resemblance to Yosemite Sam, that's probably not entirely an accident."

In under 10 years, the RSC have grown from San Francisco yuppies dabbling in street theatre to a global theatrical corporation with performances from Taunton to Tokyo. Yet their big break came not in the decadent bohemia of the Golden Gate City, but amongst the grime-stained tenements of Auld Reekie. The premiere of The Complete Works of William Shakespeare - a synthesis of earlier street shows - took the Edinburgh Fringe by storm, and soon the three part-timers were playing to packed houses in the West End. Since then, they have added The Complete History of America (abridged) to their roster and, with the opening of The Bible, the Reduced Shakespeare Company will have more shows running in the West End than anyone other than the mighty Mackintosh and Lloyd Webber -a frightening prospect for anyone who believes that the RSC produce theatre aimed at those whose attention spans have been reduced to that of an amnesiac goldfish by the quick-edit, channel-zapping speed of modern living. Long, however, denies that theirs is theatre for the MTV generation. "When we started out, I thought that we were. But people's attention spans have gotten so short now that our 90-second versions of Othello are a little too demanding for the MTV generation. What you see on television and in cinemas now is intense."

Given the RSC's reputation for treating their source material with rather less respect than devotees would like, it was only to be expected that the launch of The Bible would provoke a certain amount of outcry. Yet on its travels around the country in preparation for the West End opening, the show has attracted remarkably little controversy. It was condemned as "highly regrettable" by the Church of Scotland, and a Poole vicar urged his parishioners to boycott the show and pray for the souls of the RSC. But for the most part the response has been very muted - one might even say very British. "We got a letter from three guys in Cambridge saying that they believed that the Bible was to be taken literally, and if they were right we were going to burn in Hell - but if they were wrong, we could ignore the letter."

Long - who wrote The Bible show - is keen, however, to stress that it is not intended either to be blasphemous or to offend. "It's not like we did it because we wanted to stir up controversy. We made a point of not doing any research on The Bible. We figured, `Let's just see what we know about it off the top of our heads' - and our knowledge of the Bible is pretty sketchy. The humour comes from our own confusions about the Bible, rather than actually making fun of it. All of our shows have more to do with our own diminished mental capacities as Californians growing up in the latter half of the 20th century than they have to do with the subjects involved."

Alongside the globe-encircling stage performances, the company also presents work on television and radio. Their uvre includes a half-hour version of Wagner's Ring Cycle for Channel 4, a condensation of top Irish soap Glenroe for RTE, and Gone with the Wind II: Scarlet Fever for BBC Radio. One might imagine that such a highly visual style would flounder on an auditory medium. Quite the contrary, according to Long: "We love radio. You can do anything you want - it just sets your brain free. Only on radio can even the most unathletic performer achieve stunning acrobatics simply by announcing, `Now I'm going to do a triple flip - whooooooooooooah!' It's all in the power of suggestion.''

The idea of condensing the Bible first arose, appropriately enough, in Jerusalem. The company quickly dismissed the alternative option - The Complete Works of Andrew Lloyd Webber (abridged) - on the grounds that it would consist of one three-minute tune by Puccini. The Bible was then developed through workshopping in Alaska - an extreme (and chilly) measure to keep their show's birth pangs away from the critics' prying eyes. With a bravura bordering on the suicidal, the RSC's Daniels then premiered their idiosyncratic biblical analysis in the lion's den of America's highly religious Deep South. They survived.

Like all the RSC shows, it continues to grow organically as each cast member contributes his own insights and skills, from circus clowning to accordion-playing, together with a lavish smothering of up-to-the-minute gags. The finished product is slicker and more structured than the Shakespeare show, the product of workshop machining rather than street cobbling.

In a 100-minute dash from Creation to Armageddon, the show incorporates song-and-dance routines, conjuring and a generous use of water pistols, but is less anarchic than its Shakespearian predecessor. Yet it still contains many of the same crowd-pleasers: the corny gags, the audience participation, the slapstick and the goofy West Coast naivety which so endears the RSC to its British audiences.

The next project under development is Millennium: the Musical - an account of the last 1,000 years (abridged, of course). Meanwhile, Long's ambition is nothing less than global domination. "Our dream is one day to have the History of America running in Washington DC, the Shakespeare show in London and The Bible in Jerusalem, and then sell people round-the-world air tickets to see the RSC in all these places." If the Reduced Shakespeare Company continues to grow in popularity at its current rate, that ambition may one day be a reality. And perhaps it is only right that the nation that invented condensed soup and condensed books should now be the market leader in condensed theatre

`The Bible: the Complete Word of God' opens tonight at the Gielgud Theatre, Shaftesbury Avenue, London W1 (0171-494 5065). To 1 Nov.

The show will tour the UK between October 1997 and May 1998