David Ossman / Peter Bergman / Philip Austin
More than just a rousing send-up of Shakespeare, Anythynge You Want To: Shakespeare’s Lost Comedy is a full-length theatrical entertainment, written and rewritten continually throughout The Firesign Theatre’s long performing career. This volume collects every iambic double entendre and silly soliloquy into a surreal comedy opus, complete with Firesign’s 'scholarly' Introduction, tongue-in-cheek Footnotes, diagrams, and even recipes!The Firesign Theatre has infused the classic Shakespearian scenes of hurricanes at sea, witches capering about a cooking pot, apparitions on the battlements, graveyard passion, and mortal combat with their notoriously twisted political and social humor. A devastating oil spill, alchemical terrorism, sleezy politics, and Hollywood shenanigans are all part of the laughs.As The Firesign Theatre tells it, the legendary writing/acting quartet has been writing and performing plays since 1600 when they collaborated with the Bard on Anythynge before taking their act on the road to the New World. Reborn in the Old West as Dr. Firesign’s Theatre of the Plains, these fighting clowns have since worn many disguises and had countless high adventures on stage, in movies, and over the radio.The tales told here fill in the comic mythology of The Firesign Theatre’s most popular recorded worlds, connecting Nick Danger and George Tirebiter to Hemlock Stones, The Electrician, and 'Everything You Know is Wrong.' Bonus scripts include 1967’s radio saga The Armenian’s Paw and an early club-act favorite, Waiting for The Mount of County Crisco.Filled with photographs from performances, along with graphics by Bruce Litz, Anythynge You Want To is truly The Firesign Theatre’s major work of high comedy.
