History tour The RSC mounts a wobbly attack on America BY SALLY CRAGIN
	The Complete History of America (abridged) By Adam Long, Reed Martin, and Austin Tichenor. Set by Phil Englehardt. Costumes by Rose Blackshaw, Vernon Marshall, and Sally Thomas. With Dominic Conti, Reed Martin, and Austin Tichenor. A Reduced Shakespeare Company production presented by Merrimack Repertory Theatre, Lowell, through October 30.

Among the autumn traditions of New England are wincing at the (mis)fortunes of the Red Sox, biting into crispy McIntosh apples, and, in recent years, taking in a production by Reduced Shakespeare Company. Billed as "the bad boys of abridgment," this trio of zanies slice, dice, boil, and simmer some random body of knowledge — the works of Shakespeare, the Bible, world history — into 90 minutes or so of neo-vaudeville.

This season’s RSC offering, The Complete History of America (abridged), is actually one of the troupe’s very first shows, and it’s now been (updated) as well as (abridged). Like other RSC creations, it boasts a mostly boffo first act and a rambling second. A director might have been helpful (none is credited), since the absurdist impulses that drive the group often lead them into semantic or structural dead ends. There’s only so much jollity that can emerge from confusing "Minute Man" (as in Concord militia) with "minute man" (as in midget).

One suspects that the troupers themselves are still working on the recent-history part of this show, since founding RSC writers and members Austin Tichenor and Reed Martin are in the cast. The third point of the comedy triangle is occupied by Dominic Conti (Jerry Kernion and Michael Faulkner will also rotate in), a lanky, sensitive-looking guy who explains the raison d’ tre for the show: "Those of us who forget the past are doomed to forget other things. Your car keys, your phone number."

Would that there were as much wit throughout Complete History. The narrative starts with a silly bit about the Native Americans, and though some of the invented Indian names are amusing (the studious-looking Tichenor is referred to as "Indian Who Wears Glasses To Look Smarter"), this is a sketch designed for no better reason than to segue into Revolutionary history, with the Colonists getting up in arms and then arming themselves. Although there’s the occasional droll countercultural poke that suggests someone did some real reading (Jefferson’s crops included cannabis), obvious jokes and puns make up most of the fun, with Madison, Jefferson, and Franklin, for example, pondering a Bill of Wrongs to go along with the Bill of Rights.

More successful are japes about our national anthem. The trio begin the show by limping in and singing a hilarious version of the song that deconstructs both tune and lyrics. A flow chart reveals a few bars of music that resemble ants arguing on a gingham picnic cloth. And the guys scoff about how no one can sing the anthem as it’s "written in the key of Q, which includes an H above middle C." A revised, politically correct version of "America the Beautiful" transforms amber waves of grain into "non-Eurocentric bio-region."

Some bits have promising set-ups, among them the slide show that goes awry, leaving the trio to re-enact Mathew Brady shots of battlefield violence à la Moe, Larry, and Curly. But having a giant balloon head atop an Abraham Lincoln costume that oh-so-predictably gets popped by a huge bullet (one of the props that’s used throughout the show to highlight various conspiracy theories) is dumb and tasteless. And I couldn’t believe that the clever Reduced Shakespeareans actually trotted out those shopworn Kennedy/Lincoln comparisons — each had a secretary with the other’s last name, each was elected in a year ending in zero, etc.

Act two gets more tedious, with an audience-participation bit and a script-in-hand radio show that represents the RSC’s homage to the 20th century. One waits for savage wordplay in a Kerry/Bush debate, but the comics’ most scathing political comments are saved for a Nixon/Vietnam vignette that undoubtedly came from the show’s earliest incarnation. Other easy shots include those directed at Clinton’s Monica Lewinsky mess.

Given that The Complete History of America (abridged) is already on the road, it may be too late to do some fixes — or at least connect some dots to really current material. It’s not as if there were a shortage out there, including our apparently inalienable right to drive big stupid gas-guzzling cars. God knows the post–September 11 world has overdosed on piety. If ever we needed the Reduced Shakespeare Company to reduce us to laughter, it’s now. Unfortunately, Complete History doesn’t quite do it.