The Complete Word of God (Abridged) is the most controversial play that Northern Ireland has seen in a long, long time. After all the bally-who-ha, the cancellations, the national press and discussions on the right to censor the Arts by local government, we finally get down to asking the question that really matters -was it any good? The short answer is yes, it really was, the long answer is a little bit more detailed…
The Theatre at the Mill was positively buzzing when we entered, journalists swarmed around, seemingly interviewing every single one of the 400 people that had turned up for the performance. Even Stephen Nolan was there, milling around and chatting to folk with a perpetual camera crew following him wherever he went, like NI’s answer to Kim Kardashian. Having seen the Reduced Shakespeare Co before (doing the reduced works of Shakespeare) we are familiar with the tone of their work with is funny, at times irreverent but with a deep love and knowledge of the source material and this show was no different.
The three man play takes us through the complete story of the Bible (as the name suggests) from Genesis to Revelations, poking fun at all aspects of the book through songs, sketches and audience participation. They question whether Sodom and Gomorrah is included in the children’s illustrated version of the bible (spoiler: it’s not) and bring us songs to remember the differences between bible characters with similar names. The whole performance builds up to ten members of the audience being brought up on stage to help them recreate the story of Noah’s Ark -with hilarious consequences of course. At one point the actors realise that the two ducks on the Ark are both female and therefore won’t be much good for the future of the animal race, the performers shrug it off saying that they could always adopt, “not over here you can’t” shouts someone from the audience in return gaining hysterical laughter from everyone in the room! It’s all good fun and the three actors are on top form, making a few jibes about the elephant in the room all the while not going too far. For example, one of the rejected commandments is “thou shalt not ban the Reduced Shakespeare Company” and they ‘accidentally’ leave the microphone on during the intermission while they wonder how their ticket sales went from 150 to 400. They also tell us at the end that if we didn’t enjoy it to tell the DUP!
There was an attitude of defiance in the theatre that night, and no-one would deny that this attempted censorship took the play from two half houses to two sold out shows, as well as helping sell out the rest of their UK run. The answer to the question about whether ministers and counsellors should censor the Arts is a resounding NO from the people. It’s great that it got these guys a level of exposure that money can’t buy and we’re glad that we got to see the show that everyone’s been talking about. In the end the only thing that this has really accomplished is opening the RSC up to a bigger audience. All in all, it was a great night out and a victory for Northern Ireland that we managed to see what these very funny guys had to offer.
