Film critics are, most importantly, consumer advocates:  You only have so much entertainment cash, so spend it on this movie, not on that one.  Theatre critics attempt to fill the same role, but we know it's only useful to a point.  That's because theatre is gloriously inconsistent.  What flopped opening night could kill on Saturday.  An actor who wasn't feeling up to snuff might recover to steal the show a week later.

One of the best reasons to attend live theatre in the age of a thousand channels is the thrill of catching lightning in a bottle.  An actor may deliver a comic line a hundred times, but she'll never say it quite that way again.  The joke won't land the same way, it won't get the same laugh, and it won't create the same energy.  By laughing, an audience becomes part of the show.

Never was this truer than in Olympia Little Theatre's production of The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (Abridged).  This show, written and first performed by California's Reduced Shakespeare Company, is more sketch comedy than highbrow Hamlet.  A note in the printed script instructs each cast to invent its own jokes in order to keep the material topically relevant.  For that reason, it's important to cast actors who can not only perform iambic pentameter, but also write fresh material during the rehearsal process and ad lib in performance.  Director Erich Brown has chosen wisely.

I've performed in an Oklahoma production of Shakespeare (Abridged), and it was one of the most challenging, physically demanding roles of my life.  Not for nothing does Aaron Earle Hobbes don kneepads as OLT's show gets underway.  He, Chris Cantrell, and Thomas Neely bounce around the stage, racing through a series of decreasingly coherent costume changes to perform dozens of characters each.  All were drenched in sweat by intermission.  I would've enjoyed a shade more variation in Hobbes' female characters, but that's a minor complaint in the context of a show that earned serious laughter for two and a half hours.

Shakespeare (Abridged) was written to appeal to Bardolaters and haters alike.  It claims to enact condensed versions of all 35-plus of the master's plays - plus the sonnets - in less than two hours, but this claim is wildly and willfully inaccurate.  After skewering both Romeo and Juliet and Shakespeare himself, it skips merrily through the rest of his tragedies, correctly declaring they're funnier than the comedies.  The second act is an extended riff on Hamlet, and it climaxes in two high-speed abbreviations of the play, plus another delivered backwards.  That feat, coming as it does at the end of an hysterical marathon, is even more difficult than it sounds.  Try memorizing "melt would flesh solid too this that O," and you'll see what I mean.  It's one of Cantrell's final lines.

Community theatre is often a mixed bag.  It's designed to be entry level for actors and directors, and there are times when we have to allow for that limitation.  This is not one of those times.  Brown and his merry trio have tackled some of the most arduously difficult material available; and while the resulting laughs may vary from night to night, this consumer advocate is willing to bet they'll always be well worth your time.

[Olympia Little Theatre, The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (Abridged), through March 14, 7:55 p.m. Thursday-Saturday, 1:55 p.m. Sunday, $8-$12, 1925 Miller Ave. NE, Olympia, 360.786.9484, buyolympia.com]