An original play by Adam Bertocci, published online, that plays out the cult film The Big Lebowski In the Style of William Shakespeare.
In what has to be the one of the fastest turn-around times from publication to staging, it spread like a meme across the web starting with its public launch on January 6th, 2010. A sold-out off-off-Broadway production ran from March 18 to April 4.
Quite funny and faithful to the original movie and to Shakespearean storytelling. Formerly hosted on the author's website
; now being published as a humor book from Simon & Schuster.
This play contains examples of:
- The Annotated Edition: The first printing was an annotated edition, to keep up the pretense of it being an authentic reprint of a Shakespeare play. (To be fair, the author did such a good job keeping the linguistics authentic that a fair amount of the annotations are necessary to follow the piece.)
- Cerebus Retcon: Walter's adamant Judaism and Maude's insistence on being a single mother become a lot less funny in Elizabethan context, where both would be shunned at best. The annotations make note of their bravery.
- Shout-Out to Shakespeare: The whole thing, essentially, and not just in form. Many of the better-known lines from Shakespeare's work are appropriated in the text.
- Ye Olde Butchered English: Averted; Bertocci’s Early Modern English usage is basically flawless.
- The Zeroth Law of Trope Examples: Ditto; the script either asks, what if Shakespeare wrote the story, or proves he already did.
