Their uvre includes a half-hour version of Wagner's Ring Cycle for Channel 4 a condensation of

Their uvre includes a half-hour version of Wagner's Ring Cycle for Channel 4, a condensation of top Irish soap Glenroe for RTE, and Gone with the Wind II: Scarlet Fever for BBC Radio. One might imagine that such a highly visual style would flounder on an auditory medium Quite the contrary, according to Long: "We love radio You can do anything you want - it just sets your brain free. The humour comes from our own confusions about the Bible, rather than actually making fun of it. All of our shows have more to do with our own diminished mental capacities as Californians growing up in the latter half of the 20th century than they have to do with the subjects involved."Alongside the globe-encircling stage performances, the company also presents work on television and radio. "It's not like we did it because we wanted to stir up controversy We made a point of not doing any research on The Bible. We figured, `Let's just see what we know about it off the top of our heads' - and our knowledge of the Bible is pretty sketchy.

But for the most part the response has been very muted - one might even say very British. "We got a letter from three guys in Cambridge saying that they believed that the Bible was to be taken literally, and if they were right we were going to burn in Hell - but if they were wrong, we could ignore the letter."Long - who wrote The Bible show - is keen, however, to stress that it is not intended either to be blasphemous or to offend. Yet on its travels around the country in preparation for the West End opening, the show has attracted remarkably little controversy. It was condemned as "highly regrettable" by the Church of Scotland, and a Poole vicar urged his parishioners to boycott the show and pray for the souls of the RSC. What you see on television and in cinemas now is intense."Given the RSC's reputation for treating their source material with rather less respect than devotees would like, it was only to be expected that the launch of The Bible would provoke a certain amount of outcry. Long, however, denies that theirs is theatre for the MTV generation "When we started out, I thought that we were. But people's attention spans have gotten so short now that our 90-second versions of Othello are a little too demanding for the MTV generation.

Since then, they have added The Complete History of America (abridged) to their roster and, with the opening of The Bible, the Reduced Shakespeare Company will have more shows running in the West End than anyone other than the mighty Mackintosh and Lloyd Webber -a frightening prospect for anyone who believes that the RSC produce theatre aimed at those whose attention spans have been reduced to that of an amnesiac goldfish by the quick-edit, channel-zapping speed of modern living. Yet their big break came not in the decadent bohemia of the Golden Gate City, but amongst the grime-stained tenements of Auld Reekie. The premiere of The Complete Works of William Shakespeare - a synthesis of earlier street shows - took the Edinburgh Fringe by storm, and soon the three part-timers were playing to packed houses in the West End. The carefully rehearsed anarchy and chaos reflect both too much time spent hanging around with street jugglers and an early fascination with the Marx Brothers.