Hamlet
Hamlet
mordav
Understudy Joined: 1/14/13
#1Hamlet
Posted: 4/1/15 at 2:33am
Just got back from this tonight. What a shambles. One of the few times I have gone to the theatre and legitimately felt like I could ask for my money back. Sarsgaard did his best, I suppose. But the blame for this mess lies clearly at the feet of director Austin Pendleton, who made some truly bizarre choices. Maybe he should stick with Chekhov. What the hell he was doing with Ophelia after act 4 will remaining an enduring mystery to me. And overall it wasn't very well located in time and not clear whether it was a more modern take or simply full of anachronisms. And the Yorick speech could best be described as "interesting". The problem of mediocrity for everyone else in this production was compounded by the superlative performance by Stephen Spinella as Polonious. I was actually hoping Hamlet had stabbed someone else behind the curtain so we could see more of him. In Pendleton world we did see him drifting around on the periphery after his death, but it was all a bit confusing.
I don't want to pick out individual actors who clearly struggled with the language, but there were a few.
In short, this was truly awful. And at the end, applause was understandably muted. No standing ovation, no returning to stage for another bow.
Updated On: 4/1/15 at 02:33 AM
Dollypop
Broadway Legend Joined: 5/15/03
#3Hamlet
Posted: 4/1/15 at 2:37pm
Classic Stage Company
"You travel alone because other people are only there to remind you how much that hook hurts that we all bit down on. Wait for that one day we can bite free and get back out there in space where we belong, sail back over water, over skies, into space, the hook finally out of our mouths and we wander back out there in space spawning to other planets never to return hurrah to earth and we'll look back and can't even see these lives here anymore. Only the taste of blood to remind us we ever existed. The earth is small. We're gone. We're dead. We're safe."
-John Guare, Landscape of the Body
dtlajim
Swing Joined: 4/1/15
#4Hamlet
Posted: 4/1/15 at 5:45pm
I found this production to be unusual but quite compelling. The director has an atypical take on the story which I found interesting and supported by the uncut text. The director presents us with an unheroic and quite mad, but intelligent Hamlet. Sarsgaard is excellent, but Spinella really steals the show. How the language is delivered as chopped up common speech, not grand poetry. A very contemprary take.
dtlajim
Swing Joined: 4/1/15
#7Hamlet
Posted: 4/2/15 at 6:14am
A "complete" HAMLET would easily run over 5 hours. No way that this is using the complete text (a misnomer in and of itself) and only running slightly more than 3 hours.
"You travel alone because other people are only there to remind you how much that hook hurts that we all bit down on. Wait for that one day we can bite free and get back out there in space where we belong, sail back over water, over skies, into space, the hook finally out of our mouths and we wander back out there in space spawning to other planets never to return hurrah to earth and we'll look back and can't even see these lives here anymore. Only the taste of blood to remind us we ever existed. The earth is small. We're gone. We're dead. We're safe."
-John Guare, Landscape of the Body
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