Hamlet
Tonight was the opening night of Shakespeare in the Park, and they opened with Hamlet, my very favorite :D And as brevity is the soul of wit (and tediousness it's limbs and outward flourishes) I will be brief:
It was frickin awesome.
I was initially a bit skeptical, because all the billing for it made a big point of how it was set late victorian with an emphasis on the Suffragette movement. Which, okay, yay suffragettes, but... what's the point? The themes at play do not align at all. Like I could see almost any of the Comedies working with that setting, because so many of them are about gender issues, but I couldn't imagine how it would work in Hamlet. And the thing is... it really didn't. It was not present at all in the actual production. They played the show completely straight and it was magnificent, as Hamlet is. Really the only effect of the purported setting change was in the costumes. Which...were lovely. Particularly on the ladies in their awesome Victorian finery. And Horatio was smokin hot in his Victorian Greatcoat in that one scene where he was wearing a Greatcoat. (Apparently he learned, because he's in his shirt sleeves in the early scenes and complaining about being cold the whole time).
Speaking of Horatio, he had almost no lines in the entire show. And this was because they entirely cut the Fortinbras plotline. Honestly they cut the show down a lot, but that's fine. Although in some places it really changed...stuff. The part about having Rosencrantz and Guildenstern killed "no shriving-time allowed" wasn't in there, for instance. But yeah. Nothing about it was bad in any way. The weakest people in the show were merely "fine" instead of "excellent." It was fabulous top to bottom.
The weather honestly didn't hurt. It was the perfect night for it. We arrived an hour early and got to see them do their mic tests, and bummed around eating sandwiches. It was neither too hot nor too cold, the sky was clear, there was no humidity. It's too early for the fireflies yet, but you can't have everything. Susan and Bear-dogs came along, and we sat on the grass (front and center) and had a grand old time. When Hamlet got talking about the firmament at that one point, we were like "yeah...it's pretty great, isn't it." We kicked off our socks and shoes and everything was absolutely wonderful.
The best person in the show was, appropriately, Hamlet. She was absolutely wonderful. She also looked and acted exactly like Susan Ivanova from Babylon 5 - except when she had Janeway eyebrows instead. Oh yeah, Hamlet was a girl. Nothing else was changed - like, they didn't make Hamlet and Horatio all couply just because Hamlet was played by a woman, nor did they change Ophelia in any way, it was just... Hamlet. The person playing Hamlet just so happened to be female, and that was that. Which was, frankly, awesome. It was like "we'll just give Hamlet to whoever our best actor is." And it worked brilliantly. Hamlet and Polonius were the two best actors in the show, and the guy who played Polonius was absolutely perfect in the role and would not have worked at all as Hamlet. Oh gosh Polonius. Polonius stole every scene he was in. He was utterly wonderful. There were parts where Gertrude just wanted to strangle him and it was beautiful. And Laertes was making faces behind his back every time he turned around. He was not as conniving as in the Kenneth Brannaugh Hamlet - oh, Richard Briers was so lovely in that - nor quite as bumbling and innocent as in the David Tennant Hamlet -- rather, he was a very happy medium between the two. (Man, such good Polonii, all three of them.) He was just perfect all around.
One character who deserves extra special mention is the Ghost. This was far and away the best Ghost I have ever seen. (Yes, I liked him better than Patrick Stewart in the role.) His look was really well done, very pale without spilling over into silly. Every time he came on stage he was preceded by an appropriately eerie musical cue which persisted through his presence. His voice was soft but you could hear every word (and it wasn't irritating the way the ghost's voice can often be). And they added this cool reverb to it that was just a fraction of a second behind so it didn't impede understanding, just made it...more ghostly. While allowing the actor to speak more or less normally. So technically very very cool. And on top of that he was an excellent actor. His speech about dying with all his sins still on his head was actually very moving. And trust me, it is hard to say "oh horrible - most horrible!" without sounding ridiculous. But he nailed it. And in the scene in Gertrude's closet he reaches out to her - he actually puts his hand to her face...and she doesn't see him and it's tragic.
Oh so, Gertrude. She totally did the thing! I love it when Gertrude does the thing! So, probably my favorite thing in the Ethan Hawke Hamlet is - well, it's the fact that Ophelia is wearing a wire so she's not lying when she says her father is "at home." But my second favorite thing is that Gertrude knows the cup is poisoned when she drinks it. And she's all fierce and defiant and it's awesome. And they did that here! She's very steely in the first half - like, she's a very complicit take on Gertrude, and it's pretty great. It was a very realistic take on someone remarried - like "Hamlet, I love you dearly, but you really need to get over this, it has stopped being funny." She was very much unashamed of her actions. Also, they cut her line about "our o'er-hasty marriage" - Gertrude's got nothing to apologize for. Her reactions to the play are very much "enough is enough Hams." But after the closet scene (which, incidentally, not oedipal at all so well done there team) she's legitimately conflicted and just extremely unhappy. And in the end she sees Claudius put the pearl in the cup and puts two and two together. Oh yeah, Claudius very deliberately drinks from the cup twice, then says "this pearl is yours" and drops it in, so they're very much playing it that the pearl is the poison, and it works extremely well. But Gertrude catches on, and that's kind of the last straw for her. And so when she drinks the cup she knows exactly what she's doing, and so her lines after that end up being very touching - asking to mop Hamlet's brow, almost by way of saying goodbye. I absolutely loved it. Heck yeah strong Gertrudes.
I've got a bajillion things more but it's getting late and I should go to bed. Guildenstern was a woman as well, but in that case they changed the character as well, and, yet again, it worked extremely well. And they didn't play Rosencrantz and Guildenstern as a couple even though they easily could have. And she was something else. It actually threw me for a loop because I'm used to Rosencrantz being the goof and Guildenstern being the straight man (because I'm an absolute nut for Rosencrantz & Guildenstern are Dead) and it was the exact opposite here. Guildenstern had this big plasticky grin and was intentionally and excessively busty and was kind of Captain Obvious almost to the point of being a cloud cuckoo-lander. In other words, she was great. A really really different take on Guildenstern but one that worked. And everytime the two of them exited they were really obviously (and silently) arguing with each other. Oh, and just before the play, they try to talk to Hamlet and he blows them off, but then goes and makes a big deal over Horatio and Guildenstern gives him the biggest stink-eye I've ever seen and it's AWESOME.
The last thing I want to talk about (apart from all the other things - dude the Gravedigger was freakin hilarious and took Laertes entirely at his word about burying him too and I about lost it...especially since at the end of the scene he's still not sure about whether he should be burying Laertes) is Osric. Osric is not a character you would expect to make any kind of impression ever, but there you have it. They just have him standing around in the background in every single court scene. He's just...standing there. And occasionally interacting when Claudius tells him to. But at the end of the play, when people start dying everywhere, Osric and Bernardo are just entirely shell shocked by everything. Like, they seriously just stand there while Hamlet is committing Regicide because they're too shocked by all the goings on. When Hamlet goes down, Bernardo takes a knee, but Osric just kind of keeps standing there. And Horatio absolutely nailed his closing speech. It was great. But I kept cracking up because Osric is still just standing there. And this is the wonderful thing about live theater - because when you're on you're on everyone always has background business they're doing. And all through the final scene Osric is just standing there looking totally out of his depth and doing this back-and-forth thing with his eyeballs. It's like "oh crap am I gonna get blamed for this?" It was the best thing. Like, in my head he's quickly collapsing with Podric Payne, which is honestly great. But yeah. Freakin Osric. Just standing there. It's beautiful.
*yaaaaawn* It's late. The other one has fallen asleep. But is anything finer than Shakespeare in the Park? Newp. Well done team. Archibravo. That was some pretty awesome Hamlet, and I'm looking forward to a whole lot more.
(Guys seriously I love Hamlet so much!)
It was frickin awesome.
I was initially a bit skeptical, because all the billing for it made a big point of how it was set late victorian with an emphasis on the Suffragette movement. Which, okay, yay suffragettes, but... what's the point? The themes at play do not align at all. Like I could see almost any of the Comedies working with that setting, because so many of them are about gender issues, but I couldn't imagine how it would work in Hamlet. And the thing is... it really didn't. It was not present at all in the actual production. They played the show completely straight and it was magnificent, as Hamlet is. Really the only effect of the purported setting change was in the costumes. Which...were lovely. Particularly on the ladies in their awesome Victorian finery. And Horatio was smokin hot in his Victorian Greatcoat in that one scene where he was wearing a Greatcoat. (Apparently he learned, because he's in his shirt sleeves in the early scenes and complaining about being cold the whole time).
Speaking of Horatio, he had almost no lines in the entire show. And this was because they entirely cut the Fortinbras plotline. Honestly they cut the show down a lot, but that's fine. Although in some places it really changed...stuff. The part about having Rosencrantz and Guildenstern killed "no shriving-time allowed" wasn't in there, for instance. But yeah. Nothing about it was bad in any way. The weakest people in the show were merely "fine" instead of "excellent." It was fabulous top to bottom.
The weather honestly didn't hurt. It was the perfect night for it. We arrived an hour early and got to see them do their mic tests, and bummed around eating sandwiches. It was neither too hot nor too cold, the sky was clear, there was no humidity. It's too early for the fireflies yet, but you can't have everything. Susan and Bear-dogs came along, and we sat on the grass (front and center) and had a grand old time. When Hamlet got talking about the firmament at that one point, we were like "yeah...it's pretty great, isn't it." We kicked off our socks and shoes and everything was absolutely wonderful.
The best person in the show was, appropriately, Hamlet. She was absolutely wonderful. She also looked and acted exactly like Susan Ivanova from Babylon 5 - except when she had Janeway eyebrows instead. Oh yeah, Hamlet was a girl. Nothing else was changed - like, they didn't make Hamlet and Horatio all couply just because Hamlet was played by a woman, nor did they change Ophelia in any way, it was just... Hamlet. The person playing Hamlet just so happened to be female, and that was that. Which was, frankly, awesome. It was like "we'll just give Hamlet to whoever our best actor is." And it worked brilliantly. Hamlet and Polonius were the two best actors in the show, and the guy who played Polonius was absolutely perfect in the role and would not have worked at all as Hamlet. Oh gosh Polonius. Polonius stole every scene he was in. He was utterly wonderful. There were parts where Gertrude just wanted to strangle him and it was beautiful. And Laertes was making faces behind his back every time he turned around. He was not as conniving as in the Kenneth Brannaugh Hamlet - oh, Richard Briers was so lovely in that - nor quite as bumbling and innocent as in the David Tennant Hamlet -- rather, he was a very happy medium between the two. (Man, such good Polonii, all three of them.) He was just perfect all around.
One character who deserves extra special mention is the Ghost. This was far and away the best Ghost I have ever seen. (Yes, I liked him better than Patrick Stewart in the role.) His look was really well done, very pale without spilling over into silly. Every time he came on stage he was preceded by an appropriately eerie musical cue which persisted through his presence. His voice was soft but you could hear every word (and it wasn't irritating the way the ghost's voice can often be). And they added this cool reverb to it that was just a fraction of a second behind so it didn't impede understanding, just made it...more ghostly. While allowing the actor to speak more or less normally. So technically very very cool. And on top of that he was an excellent actor. His speech about dying with all his sins still on his head was actually very moving. And trust me, it is hard to say "oh horrible - most horrible!" without sounding ridiculous. But he nailed it. And in the scene in Gertrude's closet he reaches out to her - he actually puts his hand to her face...and she doesn't see him and it's tragic.
Oh so, Gertrude. She totally did the thing! I love it when Gertrude does the thing! So, probably my favorite thing in the Ethan Hawke Hamlet is - well, it's the fact that Ophelia is wearing a wire so she's not lying when she says her father is "at home." But my second favorite thing is that Gertrude knows the cup is poisoned when she drinks it. And she's all fierce and defiant and it's awesome. And they did that here! She's very steely in the first half - like, she's a very complicit take on Gertrude, and it's pretty great. It was a very realistic take on someone remarried - like "Hamlet, I love you dearly, but you really need to get over this, it has stopped being funny." She was very much unashamed of her actions. Also, they cut her line about "our o'er-hasty marriage" - Gertrude's got nothing to apologize for. Her reactions to the play are very much "enough is enough Hams." But after the closet scene (which, incidentally, not oedipal at all so well done there team) she's legitimately conflicted and just extremely unhappy. And in the end she sees Claudius put the pearl in the cup and puts two and two together. Oh yeah, Claudius very deliberately drinks from the cup twice, then says "this pearl is yours" and drops it in, so they're very much playing it that the pearl is the poison, and it works extremely well. But Gertrude catches on, and that's kind of the last straw for her. And so when she drinks the cup she knows exactly what she's doing, and so her lines after that end up being very touching - asking to mop Hamlet's brow, almost by way of saying goodbye. I absolutely loved it. Heck yeah strong Gertrudes.
I've got a bajillion things more but it's getting late and I should go to bed. Guildenstern was a woman as well, but in that case they changed the character as well, and, yet again, it worked extremely well. And they didn't play Rosencrantz and Guildenstern as a couple even though they easily could have. And she was something else. It actually threw me for a loop because I'm used to Rosencrantz being the goof and Guildenstern being the straight man (because I'm an absolute nut for Rosencrantz & Guildenstern are Dead) and it was the exact opposite here. Guildenstern had this big plasticky grin and was intentionally and excessively busty and was kind of Captain Obvious almost to the point of being a cloud cuckoo-lander. In other words, she was great. A really really different take on Guildenstern but one that worked. And everytime the two of them exited they were really obviously (and silently) arguing with each other. Oh, and just before the play, they try to talk to Hamlet and he blows them off, but then goes and makes a big deal over Horatio and Guildenstern gives him the biggest stink-eye I've ever seen and it's AWESOME.
The last thing I want to talk about (apart from all the other things - dude the Gravedigger was freakin hilarious and took Laertes entirely at his word about burying him too and I about lost it...especially since at the end of the scene he's still not sure about whether he should be burying Laertes) is Osric. Osric is not a character you would expect to make any kind of impression ever, but there you have it. They just have him standing around in the background in every single court scene. He's just...standing there. And occasionally interacting when Claudius tells him to. But at the end of the play, when people start dying everywhere, Osric and Bernardo are just entirely shell shocked by everything. Like, they seriously just stand there while Hamlet is committing Regicide because they're too shocked by all the goings on. When Hamlet goes down, Bernardo takes a knee, but Osric just kind of keeps standing there. And Horatio absolutely nailed his closing speech. It was great. But I kept cracking up because Osric is still just standing there. And this is the wonderful thing about live theater - because when you're on you're on everyone always has background business they're doing. And all through the final scene Osric is just standing there looking totally out of his depth and doing this back-and-forth thing with his eyeballs. It's like "oh crap am I gonna get blamed for this?" It was the best thing. Like, in my head he's quickly collapsing with Podric Payne, which is honestly great. But yeah. Freakin Osric. Just standing there. It's beautiful.
*yaaaaawn* It's late. The other one has fallen asleep. But is anything finer than Shakespeare in the Park? Newp. Well done team. Archibravo. That was some pretty awesome Hamlet, and I'm looking forward to a whole lot more.
(Guys seriously I love Hamlet so much!)