"amleth, princess of denmark"
my co-worker, lisa, found this and thought of me. it was at a theater about which neither of us knew anything so we just sort of took a chance. all i knew was that it was not hamlet, but it was a new play based on hamlet where they had gender-flipped the hamlet. which one might deduce from the title.
it's theater on a shoestring but i think that both lisa and i enjoyed it. i'll say no more before the cut tag in case any chicagoans want to head over to the dream theater and catch it.
so initially this mostly resembles hamlet except that amleth is a woman, and yes, she was dating ophelia, and yes, they do address that aspect of the relationship. but right from the onset, you notice that claudius is a far far more sympathetic character than you are used to. the ghost shows up to accuse him, but you have far more doubt about what the ghost says than in hamlet. plus, amleth didn't even like her father.
so there's a lot more doubt as to what amleth should do. which only increases as the play moves along. i found it mostly easy to go along with--there's only one or two scenes that i really thought didn't work and oddly, none were the scene with the nuns and the rats.
the set is mostly projections on a screen with the odd bench here or there. the playwright played claudius and did a nice job. amleth, ophelia, and gertrude were all good. the artificer and the dog master didn't do it for me--the latter partly because he has this stuff that he does while you are waiting in the lobby that takes away from him when he's on stage. we saw it with half price tickets which made them $10--for $10, what the hell--go support a tiny theater doing original work.
before the play we went to dinner. i had googled what was nearby and found a place, only to discover that it closes at 4 pm. so lisa and i headed west--she thought she had read something on their facebook page that might be around. we didn't find that but when we got to halsted, we found a place called DeColores which was mexican food. i had very good fish tacos and lisa had salmon with avocado salsa and we were both quite pleased, especially for having stumbled across it. so a very nice evening, overall.
it's theater on a shoestring but i think that both lisa and i enjoyed it. i'll say no more before the cut tag in case any chicagoans want to head over to the dream theater and catch it.
so initially this mostly resembles hamlet except that amleth is a woman, and yes, she was dating ophelia, and yes, they do address that aspect of the relationship. but right from the onset, you notice that claudius is a far far more sympathetic character than you are used to. the ghost shows up to accuse him, but you have far more doubt about what the ghost says than in hamlet. plus, amleth didn't even like her father.
so there's a lot more doubt as to what amleth should do. which only increases as the play moves along. i found it mostly easy to go along with--there's only one or two scenes that i really thought didn't work and oddly, none were the scene with the nuns and the rats.
the set is mostly projections on a screen with the odd bench here or there. the playwright played claudius and did a nice job. amleth, ophelia, and gertrude were all good. the artificer and the dog master didn't do it for me--the latter partly because he has this stuff that he does while you are waiting in the lobby that takes away from him when he's on stage. we saw it with half price tickets which made them $10--for $10, what the hell--go support a tiny theater doing original work.
before the play we went to dinner. i had googled what was nearby and found a place, only to discover that it closes at 4 pm. so lisa and i headed west--she thought she had read something on their facebook page that might be around. we didn't find that but when we got to halsted, we found a place called DeColores which was mexican food. i had very good fish tacos and lisa had salmon with avocado salsa and we were both quite pleased, especially for having stumbled across it. so a very nice evening, overall.