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magidLast night I celebrated Shakespeare's birthday with Hyperion Shakespeare Company's Hamlet, directed by Jason Slavick, in the Leverett Old Library. It's a nice space, with much wood and huge arched windows, but has a few limitations for shows, the largest of which is how sound-proofed it isn't. So over the course of the play, I heard chatty students and a staple gun, among other things. Luckily it's on a side street that gets few motorized vehicles.
It's a single room, with entryways in all the corners. On one side, this means four entrances, a stairway splitting halfway up leading to two above. The layout used all of these, with the audience in facing rows along the long side of the room, making it functionally into a theater in the round situation for blocking and such. The space between was empty, save for two chairs and a little table between them at the far end.
The director's note in the program focused on university and scholarship, which was played up with the books put in all the window alcoves. Also the idea of sickness, which, thankfully, was left as an idea for the reader.
It was a really good show. There were one or two small glitches in lines (opening night jitters?), but the rest was quite good. I've seen Jack Cutmore Scott in other undergrad productions, but he shone more brightly at this on in the title role. Laertes was amazing as well (though looking disconcertingly like a French exchange student to my high school, a million years ago, which distracted me from the play some. And once I was thinking about high school, I thought that Horatio had similar hair and skin tone to a different high school friend). For all of them, the words danced with meaning, and it was easy to follow. The gravediggers were played as extreme Bostonians, which was pretty funny. And a bunch of other places ended up with laughs, that I'd not seen played that way before.
Thoughts brought forward this time around:
* Why isn't Hamlet the heir? No one really seems to think he is, not even himself.
* If Claudius had just let Hamlet go back to school, would it all have blown over?
* I'd never noticed the reference to Polonius as Jeptha before; it was particularly noticeable to me this time because I saw Jason's show J on that story years ago.
* Hamlet can't be that young if he remembers Yorrick, who's been dead 23 years. Late 20s, at least, which is old enough to lead a country (or a rebellion), not a callow teenager.
* Other than having everyone dead at the end, why did Ophelia have to die (and offstage, too!)? She had already cracked up, which was sufficient fuel for Laertes' rage.
* Both Ophelia and Hamlet cracked, in one way or another, when faced with unpalatable truths. Was this emotional instability underneath a part of the attraction, like for like?
* Hamelt seemed to have lots of popular support. If he had killed Claudius and presented his case for why, it would likely have been acceptable to the country.
It's a single room, with entryways in all the corners. On one side, this means four entrances, a stairway splitting halfway up leading to two above. The layout used all of these, with the audience in facing rows along the long side of the room, making it functionally into a theater in the round situation for blocking and such. The space between was empty, save for two chairs and a little table between them at the far end.
The director's note in the program focused on university and scholarship, which was played up with the books put in all the window alcoves. Also the idea of sickness, which, thankfully, was left as an idea for the reader.
It was a really good show. There were one or two small glitches in lines (opening night jitters?), but the rest was quite good. I've seen Jack Cutmore Scott in other undergrad productions, but he shone more brightly at this on in the title role. Laertes was amazing as well (though looking disconcertingly like a French exchange student to my high school, a million years ago, which distracted me from the play some. And once I was thinking about high school, I thought that Horatio had similar hair and skin tone to a different high school friend). For all of them, the words danced with meaning, and it was easy to follow. The gravediggers were played as extreme Bostonians, which was pretty funny. And a bunch of other places ended up with laughs, that I'd not seen played that way before.
Thoughts brought forward this time around:
* Why isn't Hamlet the heir? No one really seems to think he is, not even himself.
* If Claudius had just let Hamlet go back to school, would it all have blown over?
* I'd never noticed the reference to Polonius as Jeptha before; it was particularly noticeable to me this time because I saw Jason's show J on that story years ago.
* Hamlet can't be that young if he remembers Yorrick, who's been dead 23 years. Late 20s, at least, which is old enough to lead a country (or a rebellion), not a callow teenager.
* Other than having everyone dead at the end, why did Ophelia have to die (and offstage, too!)? She had already cracked up, which was sufficient fuel for Laertes' rage.
* Both Ophelia and Hamlet cracked, in one way or another, when faced with unpalatable truths. Was this emotional instability underneath a part of the attraction, like for like?
* Hamelt seemed to have lots of popular support. If he had killed Claudius and presented his case for why, it would likely have been acceptable to the country.