Stage Review
'Complete History' an over-the-top romp

By Joseph T. Rozmiarek
Advertiser Theater Critic

Amerigo Vespucci (Dan Kois) shoves a globe at his wife Sophia (Mathias Maas) in the production at Mªnoa Valley Theatre. Gregory Yamamoto • The Honolulu Advertiser 'The Complete History of America (abridged)' 7:30 p.m. Wednesdays and Thursdays, 8 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays, 4 p.m. Sundays through July 29 Manoa Valley Theatre $22, discounts available. Buffet dinner available on lanai before curtain Wednesdays-Saturdays. 988-6131

"The Complete History of America (abridged)" is two acts of stand-up team effort that is goofy, tasteless, ridiculous and nonstop. If you can't find something to laugh at or be offended by, wait two minutes. New jokes pop up faster than the old ones die off.

Directed by Mark Lutwak and featuring R. Kevin Doyle, Dan Kois and Mathias Maas, the pace is often so fast that individual shots can get lost in the gunfire. Just try to catch the names of all the local politicians that show up as Italian expletives in the skit on Amerigo Vespucci.

The show is the creation of Adam Long, Reed Martin and Austin Tichenor, and was originally produced by the Reduced Shakespeare Company. In two hours, it does for America what the company did for the complete works of William Shakespeare — reduce it to strangely familiar absurdity.

While the actors play themselves, each develops a persona that links the multiple roles they take on during the play. Doyle becomes the tough guy — an Army sergeant or a private detective. Kois is pompous and professorial and prone to using big words. Maas becomes the youngster, the raving liberal, and most of the women.

Together, and with the help of a stage full of props and costumes, they romp through fifty thousand years of American history — most of which is the Ice Age — touching on the mostly funny parts.

Still, World War I isn't remembered for making people laugh, but it works as comedy when the trio spray the audience with water from plastic tommy guns and escape through enemy lines disguised as the Andrews sisters. It helps not to take anything seriously — including racism, genocide and assassinations.

If you can't handle this brand of humor, avoid the show, like the couple that walked out when the cast rearranged the letters in "Spiro Agnew."

But if you stick it out, you'll be treated to Lewis and Clark as a vaudeville act and a Valley Forge peopled with tiny munchkins (minute men, get it?).

The show makes its longest stops at America's wars and simply skips the period between the Civil War and World War I (nothing much funny happened, except for the bit about exploiting child labor). All of it is politically incorrect and very gutsy.

The cast spends its energy with abandon as costumes and props pile up over the stage. The audience even has a chance to ask questions — so come wearing your flack jacket and be prepared to aim and fire.