Thursday, The Good Bits
On a happier note, went to see 'Hamlet' in the evening, which cheered me right up. Is Twickenham really so far away, or am I becoming insular and awful and losing my Australian sense of space? Nevertheless it was good to see people again. There was gin and tonic and discussion of The Yartz. Yay! The production was good too - loved the 19th-century military setting. Those uniforms=brilliant, and I want Gertrude's dress. Now. I'm such a magpie. Hamlet was rather good too, played it for laughs occasionally, a strategy which, if done well, can really work in Shakespeare's tragedies. (Then try squeezing a laugh out of Shakespeare's comedies.)
Most of the acting was pretty good actually. Particularly liked Polonius, this time played absolutely straight which is the funniest way to play him. The women, however, were okay. And okay is painful. Bad, you can laugh at. Good, you can applaud. But Gertrude sat there trying to look queenly and ending up looking like she'd just been to the dentist's and the anaesthetic hadn't worn off yet. Ophelia I think had been directed to play the part the way she did, which was 'perky, whimsical, modern young woman'. Unfortunately Shakespeare just didn't write Ophelia that way. Much as one might desire a feminist interpretation of Ophelia, there is no room for it in the play, and it just didn't work. It looked very, very odd. The uni production I was in featured a female Hamlet and a male Ophelia. Due to the gender role expectations still, sadly, very much around today, it showed up what a strong and three-dimensional role Hamlet is, and what an incredibly weak role Ophelia is. ('Hey! Why doesn't the independent, active bloke have anything to do?') Mad Ophelia was annoying, but Mad Ophelia always is.
But it was wonderful immersing myself in the beauty of Shakespeare's language, in the way that Hamlet has become a cliched play, but become so because it's good - because Shakespeare sums up a concept in a way no one else can match. You can give the play nearly any setting or context, and it will work, in the same way that you can never ruin a truly great song by covering it. (There's a meme: Worst Cover In The World?) And then I went home and got some sleep.
Most of the acting was pretty good actually. Particularly liked Polonius, this time played absolutely straight which is the funniest way to play him. The women, however, were okay. And okay is painful. Bad, you can laugh at. Good, you can applaud. But Gertrude sat there trying to look queenly and ending up looking like she'd just been to the dentist's and the anaesthetic hadn't worn off yet. Ophelia I think had been directed to play the part the way she did, which was 'perky, whimsical, modern young woman'. Unfortunately Shakespeare just didn't write Ophelia that way. Much as one might desire a feminist interpretation of Ophelia, there is no room for it in the play, and it just didn't work. It looked very, very odd. The uni production I was in featured a female Hamlet and a male Ophelia. Due to the gender role expectations still, sadly, very much around today, it showed up what a strong and three-dimensional role Hamlet is, and what an incredibly weak role Ophelia is. ('Hey! Why doesn't the independent, active bloke have anything to do?') Mad Ophelia was annoying, but Mad Ophelia always is.
But it was wonderful immersing myself in the beauty of Shakespeare's language, in the way that Hamlet has become a cliched play, but become so because it's good - because Shakespeare sums up a concept in a way no one else can match. You can give the play nearly any setting or context, and it will work, in the same way that you can never ruin a truly great song by covering it. (There's a meme: Worst Cover In The World?) And then I went home and got some sleep.