What a piece of work is man
May. 29th, 2008 06:29 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ceebeegeeHamlet was LONG last night. I got out after 11:30 and just barely caught the last N train going into Queens (thanks to a helpful booth attendant who told me to hurry).
I think the director was going for a theme of existentialism. The set was vast, white and sterile--vaguely militaristic with rivets and whatnot, and an eternal flame down center. And the play started with "To be or not to be..."--also, there were quite a few skulls tossed out during the gravedigger scene. The guy who played Hamlet, Michael Stuhlbarg, was pretty good--very dimensional and charming. I was a little disappointed in Lauren Ambrose's Ophelia--I heard so many great things about her last summer as Juliet, and she was just sort of there, even in the mad scenes. Those scenes are so iconic, I suppose it's difficult to make them your own, but still...Helena Bonham Carter will always be the best Ophelia I've ever seen. I will say, Ambrose was sweet in the early scenes. However, no chemistry with Stuhlbarg, possibly because he looked quite a bit older than her. And Gertrude, while fine in the other scenes, threw away some important moments, most notably in the "Hamlet, thou hast thy father much offended" scene. After Polonius kicks it, she doesn't seem that moved, or terrified at her son's actions, or much emotional about anything, and it's staged in such a way that you cannot forget that Polonius is dead. (I hope I'm not spoiling it for anyone :) She has a similar non-reaction at the news of Ophelia's death. If it was a character choice, I think it's an ill-advised one--I don't think Gertrude is that callous and even if she were completely insensitive to the human cost of death, it's still difficult to forget about the sheer visceral grossness of a dead body right there. Her director should've said something, or directed her to a stronger framing of that choice.
The militaristic set serves the Fortinbras stuff quite well, and there's an interesting twist at the end that I won't spoil. I have no idea what era the costumes were supposed to evoke, they were all over the place--Gertrude and Ophelia were rockin' some '50s dresses, R&G had one little derby hats from the '20s, and Claudius looked mostly contemporary. Oh! the Players have these awesome puppets that were absolutely fascinating, I couldn't take my eyes off them.
I think the director was going for a theme of existentialism. The set was vast, white and sterile--vaguely militaristic with rivets and whatnot, and an eternal flame down center. And the play started with "To be or not to be..."--also, there were quite a few skulls tossed out during the gravedigger scene. The guy who played Hamlet, Michael Stuhlbarg, was pretty good--very dimensional and charming. I was a little disappointed in Lauren Ambrose's Ophelia--I heard so many great things about her last summer as Juliet, and she was just sort of there, even in the mad scenes. Those scenes are so iconic, I suppose it's difficult to make them your own, but still...Helena Bonham Carter will always be the best Ophelia I've ever seen. I will say, Ambrose was sweet in the early scenes. However, no chemistry with Stuhlbarg, possibly because he looked quite a bit older than her. And Gertrude, while fine in the other scenes, threw away some important moments, most notably in the "Hamlet, thou hast thy father much offended" scene. After Polonius kicks it, she doesn't seem that moved, or terrified at her son's actions, or much emotional about anything, and it's staged in such a way that you cannot forget that Polonius is dead. (I hope I'm not spoiling it for anyone :) She has a similar non-reaction at the news of Ophelia's death. If it was a character choice, I think it's an ill-advised one--I don't think Gertrude is that callous and even if she were completely insensitive to the human cost of death, it's still difficult to forget about the sheer visceral grossness of a dead body right there. Her director should've said something, or directed her to a stronger framing of that choice.
The militaristic set serves the Fortinbras stuff quite well, and there's an interesting twist at the end that I won't spoil. I have no idea what era the costumes were supposed to evoke, they were all over the place--Gertrude and Ophelia were rockin' some '50s dresses, R&G had one little derby hats from the '20s, and Claudius looked mostly contemporary. Oh! the Players have these awesome puppets that were absolutely fascinating, I couldn't take my eyes off them.
