Condensed Shakespeare isn't necessarily the best way to go

FORT WORTH -- Greek tragedy rubs elbows with Elizabethan comedy in the Condensed Shakespeare Festival: Toga Party Edition, an evening of three plays for the price of one offered by the Stolen Shakespeare Guild at the Fort Worth Community Arts Center.

The first act is devoted to a sort of Reader's Digest version of the Bard's The Comedy of Errors, wherein this comedy of brotherly confusion set in ancient Greece is reduced to less than one hour. The second act comprises Sophocles' tragic Antigone and a wacky, contemporary treatment of Medea written by Christopher Durang and Wendy Wasserstein.

Shakespeare's comedy is, of course, delivered at a blinding pace, which is generally a positive. But, things are bit muddled at the outset, perhaps due more to the adaptation than the performance. It takes a few scenes for the show to settle into itself and gain a modicum of coherency. Once it does, though, it works well enough in terms of telling the tale.

One aspect of this show that does work exceptionally well, however, is the presentation of the two pairs of twins at the center of the story. Thanks to Lauren Morgan's costuming (which is a strong point of all three segments) and some effective wigs, two pairs of actors who do not resemble one another offstage seem to be almost as identical as the script calls for them to be.

A much more serious turn is taken in Antigone, which is staged in modern dress suggesting a military dictatorship of the more recent past.

The trio of plays closes with Durang and Wasserstein's take on Medea, which is a lot more about doing that play than the play itself.

It is a brief bit of foolishness that prevents the audience from leaving the theater under the heavy weight of Antigone's grimness.