THE Reduced Shakespeare Company is vowing to be more ruthless in its latest down-sizing operation, All The Great Books Abridged, at the Grand Opera House, York, next week.

Company co-founder Austin Tichenor says: "After the relative excess of The Complete Millennium Musical (Abridged) - you know, music, harmony, and for want of a better word, 'dancing' - we wanted to go back to basics.

"The new show is a return to our literary roots. We do 90 books in 90 minutes by cutting out the boring characters and unimportant subplots and getting right to the sex and the killing, which is what people want to see."

How did the RSC go about selecting the Great Books for condensed mirth? "We engaged in the usual lively scholarly debate, followed by (since we are, after all, Americans) gunplay," says Austin, still alive and on line from America.

The show was premiered in the United States and now it is Britain's turn to learn about all the literary luminaries, from Chaucer to Dickens to Archer, at the feet of the satirical Americans.

"Archer? Who? No, actually we do cover Jeffrey Archer. In fact, many of the world's great books were written by jailbirds and ex-cons. And we fully explain the books that audiences may not be familiar with. If we only covered books British audiences know, it would be only Postman Pat and Noddy." Ooh, cheeky chap.

Tichenor and his two co-writers seek to balance the irreverent with the affectionate. "People might think we're making fun of the books, but we celebrate them. We make fun of the sometimes terrible way these books are taught in school," he says.

What is your favourite book, Austin? "I really like Lord Of The Rings and The Communist Manifesto, but then I love all works of fantasy," he says.

As for the most over-rated: "The book that everybody raved about, everybody bought, and hardly anybody actually read, was Stephen Hawking's A Brief History Of Time." Now, thanks to the RSC, that history will be even briefer.

Performances at 7.30pm, November 27 to 29; tickets £15, £12 on 0870 606 3595.

Updated: 09:52 Friday, November 21, 2003