Two Gentlemen of Lebowski

In this ambitious effort, filmmaker and first-time author Bertocci rewrites the Coen brothers' 1998 film The Big Lebowski, one of the cleverest pieces of screenwriting in recent memory, in the style of William Shakespeare. In other words, Bertocci attempts to use the style of one of the most inventive writers of English to improve on jokes that are already impeccably well written. A coward he is not. But is he successful? More and more devotees of cultural phenomena are writing their own stories featuring characters from books or movies. Fan fiction is a quickly burgeoning genre. Some is imaginative and stands alone as a creative piece, and some reads as a dull essay. This play—which began as a website and went viral in January and was performed in New York in March—falls somewhere in the middle.