Hamlet

How do you do a play like “Hamlet,” so popular it has been done thousands of times, in thousands of different ways? How do you make a play that is over four hundred yeas old seem fresh, and speak to a contemporary audience? This production attempts to do just that. I must confess that I am not a huge fan of “conceptual” Shakespeare. How many times can we endure “Richard III” set in Nazi Germany, or “The Scottish Play” in the Wild West? That is why I am adamant that this is not yet another “post-apocalyptic” Shakespeare production. Unlike many “conceptual” versions of Shakespeare, the decisions made in this production are rooted in the themes and ideas that are at the center of the script itself. Our concept is a metaphor that weaves together the disparate aspects of the production – the scenery, the costumes, the lights, the sound, and, in this case, the videography – into a form that sets up a kind of resonating chamber for the deeper meanings held within the play. In the early stages of conception, the overwhelming theme of decay led me to seek an analogy for the state of Denmark in the 12th century, in the middle ages, hundreds of years after the fall of Rome, trapped within the dark ages that separated the fall of one civilization from the rise of the next. It sent me wondering about how life will be hundreds of years from now, in a time when our own civilization may be in decay. Although I have changed the setting to an ambiguous, anachronistic “Future Dark Age,” the characters in this production were not the victims of a nuclear holocaust. Their civilization, like all civilizations, crumbled, due an economic collapse, environmental chaos, and perpetual war, eerily similar to the challenges facing our world today. This is what happens when a society ignores history, scoffs at science, and discounts the value of educating of its citizens. The cutting of the script, as well, reflects the concerns of a mediatized society that is rapidly losing its attention span. What is normaly a four hour play has been cut to just over two hours. To do so demanded the loss of the political subplot, the mechanizations of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, Hamlet’s trip to England, and the impending arrival of Fortinbras and the Norwegian army.  What is left, when we strip away the detritus of the subplot, is a well-made play, a domestic tragedy, dramme bourgeois, an allegory of the modern human condition. The story now becomes focused on the love interests and dangerous dessires that set the events in motion, leading to the downfall of one entire family.