- instead of prince of denmark, hamlet is actually prince, the musical artist. his “madness” mirrors that artist’s own decent into a label war and irrelevance in the 1990s, and when he says “thinkest thou alexander looked this way over the earth?” he is in fact referring to his triumphant super bowl performance in 2007. the text remains unchanged. color scheme: purple.
- any scene that incorporated rosencrantz and guildenstern is instead replaced by an actor holding up a big sign reading FUCK YOU TOM STOPPARD for the approximate amount of time the two characters would be on stage. because this compromises the “what a piece of work is a man” speech, the version from “withnail and I” is played during the intermission so the audience doesn’t feel cheated.
- at the point where polonius mentions that in his youth he played the part of julius caesar, the entire play pauses briefly while the entirety of shakespeare’s “julius caesar” is enacted with the actor playing polonius playing caesar and the actor playing hamlet playing brutus, to demonstrate to modern audiences why this shakespearian in-joke was funny in 1600.
- no lights are used throughout the play except when the king calls for light in ending the play within a play, in an attempt to be true to the stage directions.
- ophelia is replaced by a ticker-tape machine to represent both uncertainty and the relentless march of information the character is confronted with and eventually cannot process. in an added interpolation, we see it dropped into the bathtub when gertrude announces to laertes that “one woe doth tread upon another’s heel.” a modern-dress production may have her instead played by a bloomberg terminal.
- hitler mustaches for everyone.
- in a tribute to the television series “quantum leap,” which featured a performance of “hamlet,” the play is performed as an episode of “quantum leap,” with dr. sam beckett replaced by the author samuel beckett’s krapp from “krapp’s last tape.” the soliloquies are recorded on reel-to-reel tape while the character eats bananas and makes people’s lives better while travelling through time. to indicate the ways the future has imitated these three archaic visions of random motion leading towards a broader fate, getrude is dressed as carmen sandiago.
- in an attempt to bring the play in line with the later reconciliation themes shakespeare dabbled in towards the end of his life, the last two acts of the play are replaced with the last two acts of “pericles,” which are probably the only two acts of that play shakespeare wrote anyway.
- jazzercize.
March 31, 2009, 12:57pm Comments
