How Shakespeare ended up on EasyJet and survived the TikTok generation

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It was a mild, cloudy day in 2014 when William Shakespeare – a mere 398 years after his death – broke a new Guinness World Record for the highest-ever theatrical performance, which took place at 37,000 feet.

The passengers on the 10:20am EasyJet flight from Gatwick to Verona were just settling into their seats when an announcement came over the speaker: "The performance of Romeo and Juliet will be starting in the next 10 minutes. If you want drinks or if you want to use the lavatory, do so now."

Reduced Shakespeare Company founder Adam Long certainly recalls a few "bewildered faces" in the rows before his troupe took centre aisle and proceeded to do battle with the hostess trolley, climb on the backs of chairs, and re-enact the most iconic love story of all time in 45 minutes flat.

"This is where our street theatre background really came in handy," said Long, "Over the years we've become very good at adapting to different spaces, but this was probably the most challenging one yet, the balcony scene was... interesting."

All of this, in the name of celebrating the Bard's 450th birthday and showing off his works in a whole new light – something Long has spent the last four decades working on.

It was in 1981 that Long, and friends Daniel Singer and Jess Winfield first started the Reduced Shakespeare Company. The trio used their passion for his plays to perform quickfire productions of Hamlet at a series of Renaissance Fairs in San Francisco and Los Angeles, mainly in front of (as Long puts it) "hippies, bikers, computer programmers and punks".

The cast of the Reduced Shakespeare Company. China Photos / Stringer

After seeing some success however, the group took their show across the pond to perform at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe and, in the process, bulked it up to include all 37 of Shakespeare's plays.

Looking back at this first run, Long said: "We went to Edinburgh thinking that that would be our swan song. We all sat down together and said this has been fun, but there's no future in it, so let's just have a big transatlantic party, do the show and then just go home and move on with our lives. But by the time we landed in California, we already had messages on our machines."

What was performed at the Fringe – at 10am in a church basement no less – was the first iteration of The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (Abridged), a parody play that would end up having a staggering nine-year run on the West End stage, plus two TV specials and performances in over 20 countries.

The show became known for using a slew of pop-culture jokes to rattle through each and every one of Shakespeare's plays, from Tommy Cooper references to the Beatles, bringing together sharp humour, props and physical comedy into one perfectly bizarre packages.

Long said the show has had everything from livestock walking across the stage to audience members "getting up and dancing in the middle of our show for no particular reason".

CAST OF THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE TO PERFORM LIVE IN FRONT OF HONG KONG BANK HQ. (L-R)EZRA BIX (RED); TIM SCHWERDT (BLUE) AND BERYNN SCHWERDT (YELLOW). 03 March 2004 (Photo by David Wong/South China Morning Post via Getty Images) — 2004 cast of the Complete Works of William Shakespeare. David Wong/South China Morning Post via Getty Image

"There were many nights where I was backstage just trying to catch my breath and looking at our props table with a pie that had a head baked in it and an electronic Godzilla and a whole bunch of wigs, and I would just think, what have I done with my life?" laughed Long.

"But then we were invited to perform on the White House lawn in front of Barack Obama so we must have been doing something right!"

He added: "We just discovered that people all over the world would laugh at the same things, everybody seems to have a similar sense of humour. It was amazing to fly all over the planet for a couple of years and then, ending up in the West End was sort of the ultimate punchline to the joke. You know, performing Shakespeare in the home of Shakespeare when he was at his height, was the ultimate pinnacle."

Now, the show is returning for another UK tour, hitting 30 local theatres between now and July 2026. When its return was announced, Long had the job of finding four newcomers to take on his life's work, made all the harder by the fact more than 2,000 young actors applied. The resulting troupe consists of Efé Agwele, Woogie Jung, Tom Pavey and Kiran Raywilliams, and it's safe to say they'll need plenty of stamina to get through such a madcap performance.

"Well luckily we've found that, Efé told me she runs 10k every day and she was walking an hour and a half to get to rehearsals," said Long. "And Tom, he must have a lot of stamina because the PhD that he's doing is in lion conservation. So he was actually in Africa doing field work when he heard about the auditions for this show and he flew back."

The cast members of the Reduced Shakespeare Company — Woogie and Efé in the new Complete Works of William Shakespeare. Mark Senior

Long added that this young cast have helped to give the show a refresh for the 2020s, bringing in new references for instance: "I'm learning all sorts of new words. There's a character named Caliban in The Tempest who takes an unwelcome interest in one of the female characters, and one of the actors described it as... he was rizzing up – I had never even heard the phrase rizzed up before, but you know, that's worked its way into the show now."

For him and the new cast, it's more important than ever for the show to feel fun and accessible to younger audiences: "Even when I was a kid people were talking about eroded attention spans, so we always thought of our show as what happens when the genius of a William Shakespeare collides with the attention spans of a modern young person.

"And nowadays, the attention spans are under even more assault, aren't they? Because it's TikTok videos and social media and YouTube."

But ultimately his goal is, as it was 45 years ago, to cure anyone's assumption that the works of Shakespeare are boring or dry – something he blames on the association with exams.

"People often say to me, oh, is reduced Shakespeare supposed to be the antidote to boring Shakespeare? And the question just always flummoxes me because I've never seen anything that I consider to be boring Shakespeare.

"When you see it come to life on stage, there's nothing like it, and with ours you're getting 37 plays for the price of one – so you'll have your money's worth!"

When and where can I see The Complete Works of William Shakespeare live?

The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (Abridged) is on tour from now until July 2026, stopping at 30 venues across the UK. You can buy tickets at the official tour website.