Hamlet & Me (Part V)

"It's me. Hi."
Derek Jacobi, Kenneth Branagh, Julie Christie
Hamlet, 1996

Look. I come to bury Kenneth Branagh’s Hamlet, not to praise it.

But how can you argue with success? It’s a brightly colored production with manically animated set pieces and swirling camerawork – Hamlet as an action film, which is fine! The character has long been described as a man who cannot decide, who is unable to “take action.” But he does! He’s always on the move! And Branagh makes him vital and exciting, not brooding and torpid.

I visit schools all over, have done so for years, and if there is a film version of Hamlet most shown in these schools, this is positively that one.

However, in the act of presenting the complete text, a four-hour endeavor, the entire undertaking feels rushed, under-rehearsed and not carefully considered.

Watching the film for the first time in a recently renovated Centrum Theatre on Coventry, I was impressed by the first soliloquy, “O, That this too, too solid flesh …” Not for the rendition itself (which is fine) but how long the take is. Branagh delivers the piece without a cut, and then the scene continues unbroken as Horatio, Barnardo and Marcellus enter to share the news of the ghost.

Long, uncut takes like this allow an actor to display the range of their stagecraft, and it’s like watching a good play, up close. Take for example Claudius (Derek Jacobi) seducing Laertes (Michael Maloney) into committing acts of treachery. It’s a great scene from the play, and one usually cut to the bare facts.

Unfortunately, as the film goes on these long takes feel like a method to rush the filming along. For the “rogue and peasant slave” soliloquy, which should be one of the high-points of any production, Branagh thrashes about with his limbs, frantically gawping as he trashes a map room. It may be emotionally appropriate, but the director in me wanted him to try it again. I was led to believe the whole production was so big he decided that there wasn’t time to get it right.

Other crimes, in no particular order:

• Scary, scary Brian Blessed
• Sexy Dane sex
• Rapier javelin
• Smushed Ophelia face
• Christ pose exit
• Jack Lemmon

And perhaps most egregious, the speech “How all occasions do inform against me” is depressing, not rousing. It is not “St. Crispin’s Day.”

As my father once told me, “If you aim at a king, you must kill him.” That summer I had already started to fantasize about staging some future production of Hamlet, and I would take my time in conceiving it.

To be continued.

Hamlet & Me (Part IV)

Brian Blessed & Kenneth Branagh
Henry V, 1989

At the age of 26, Orson Welles directed and starred in what is generally regarded as the best film ever made, Citizen Kane. That was in 1941.

At the age of 26, Kenneth Branagh directed and starred in what is generally regarded as the best adaptation of Shakespeare to film, Henry V. That was in 1989.

Side note: At the age of 26, I directed my first Shakespeare, Guerrilla Theater Company’s production of "Romeo & Juliet" and lots of people liked it. That was in 1994.

An independent film, and therefore not widely distributed, I believe I first saw Branagh’s Henry V in early 1990, and we all lost our shit.

Recently acolytes to the genius of Shakespeare we, the magnificence and success of this movie heralded nothing less than a renaissance of Shakespeare on film, which indeed came to pass. Whether or not you choose to credit Branagh with this achievement, 1990s cinema (and beyond) was fairly awash with Shakespeare, including Franco Zeffirelli's Hamlet (1990), Oliver Parker’s Othello (1995), Baz Luhrmann’s Romeo + Juliet (1996), Twelfth Night (1996), A Midsummer Night’s Dream (1999) and Michael Almereyda’s Hamlet (2000) as well as adaptations like 10 Things I Hate About You (1999), O (2001) and She’s the Man (2006).

Branagh’s next cinematic Shakespearean outing solidified his reputation among Gen X aged theater nerds. Much Ado About Nothing is a bright and goofy take on what has become one of my very favorite of the Bard’s scripts, and this time Branagh expanded upon his acclaim by casting a number of high-profile American actors including Denzel Washington, Keanu Reeves and Michael Keaton.

This is one of the truly impressive things about Branagh; great actors and movie stars want to work with him, a trend which continues to this day as his Poirot adaptations pop with familiar names and faces.

Even before Henry V, Branagh had staked his reputation with his Renaissance Theatre Company. Like Welles before him and his Mercury Theatre, the work began onstage. Branagh directed and starred in stage versions of Romeo and Juliet, Twelfth Night, As You Like It and others as well as classic works by other playwrights. He also produced radio adaptations for R&J, King Lear and Hamlet, all of which I acquired and listened to on cassette.

I could go off on how his audio adaptation of Romeo and Juliet inspired me to direct a production myself, or how I read that John Gielgud was unhappy with how Branagh insisted on recording King Lear (Gielgud played the lead) with scant rehearsal. This last detail will be relevant later.

Michael Maloney (center) & ensemble
In the Bleak Midwinter (1995)

For his third Shakespearean outing onscreen, I had hoped Branagh would choose, well, absolutely any title but Hamlet. Much Ado, for all the adoration heaped upon it, is not great. There is a lot of mugging and eye-rolling meant to indicate to an American audience which lines are meant to be funny, and before that he had directed the modern noir mystery Dead Again (1991) which is unintentionally hilarious. I didn’t think he was yet a good enough director to summit the Dane.

When it was announced that Branagh’s Hamlet would feature the complete text, entirely unabridged, it was clear he was pointing to the bleachers. He wouldn’t be merely directing a Hamlet, he wanted to make the Hamlet. I was very worried.

In 1995, Branagh wrote and directed In the Bleak Midwinter (US title: A Midwinter’s Tale) a brief, black and white comedy about the company of “am-dram” performers putting on a holiday production of Hamlet. It’s a silly and delightful piece of work, full of inside baseball for thespians, and Branagh doesn’t even appear. His surrogate is the film is Michael Maloney, who opens the film with the monologue about the anxiety of acting as a profession, a performance which is all the more enjoyable when you realize Maloney is doing a spot-on impersonation of Kenneth Branagh.

Midwinter is a celebration of the act of creation, a love-letter to theater artists everywhere, and in its way, I felt the film was an apology for the grotesque and unhappy excesses of his Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein (1994). Maybe Branagh's Hamlet would be good after all.

To be continued.

Hamlet & Me (Part III)

I have this poster.

December 1990, the school of theater had arranged a tour of London and Stratford. We got to see Royal Shakespeare performances of King Lear, Love’s Labour’s Lost, Much Ado About Nothing, and Chekhov’s The Seagull.

I was still pretty jet-lagged when we rolled into the Royal Shakespeare Theatre for Lear, and literally pinched myself through the show to stay awake. The most compelling reformer was He Who Played Edmund (that’s a hint, by the way). In the first scene, Edmund says little, but gracefully endures the verbal bullets cast his way by other for his “illegitimate” birth.

When all have gone, this Edmund took his position, center stage, one foot forward, and delivered the most cutting and hilarious rendition of the “Bastard” speech I have ever heard, feet planted, hands at his sides, he just said it. His voice, his face, and the text doing all the work.

This was Ralph Fiennes, twenty-eight years old, and three years from Schindler’s List and international acclaim.

The next day he was Berowne in Love’s Labour’s. For the “Love’s Whip” speech he did the same thing as with Edmund's soliloquy, he just said it, standing there. And I thought, "Oh, this is his bit. He does this.” For some reason, that left the twenty-two year me unimpressed.

Then came Schindler’s List, and Quiz Show, and then he performed Hamlet at the Belasco Theater on Broadway in 1995, where it was quite the palpable hit. And we went to see it!

Once more, I was seated in the very back row of a theater to see a live production of Hamlet. After being subjected to his uncle’s condescension and his mother’s entreaties, the Prince is left alone on stage, and recites “O, that this too, too solid flesh would melt …”

Fiennes stood, one foot forward, hands at his side, and just said it.

I leaned over to my girlfriend and whispered knowingly, “He does this."

Ralph Fiennes as Hamlet
Belasco Theatre, 1995
Photo: Mark Thompson

Of course, he did so much more, too. Hamlet has several soliloquies and monologues, each of which move the plot forward and track the progression of his psyche throughout the play. “Too, too solid flesh” is the rock bottom; if he does have a suicide soliloquy it is this, and not “To be or not to be.” That first speech mentions “self-slaughter” as a viable (if damnable) option. If anything, “To be …” is an argument against entropy.

Regardless, Fiennes stood, for that one moment, and was on the move for the rest of the show. I recall in particular his delivering Hamlet’s advice to the players as he worked with them to set up chairs for the performance. Kinetic, engaged – a participant.

I stood, too, during the curtain call. I even hollered “Bravo!” which is slightly embarrassing to recall. Was it that good? I think he was, he was certainly the best Hamlet I had seen to that date, which included GLT’s 1989 production, Zeffirelli's 1990 film, and another local production in 1991, the inaugural offering from the Cleveland Theater Company, an entirely unabridged production directed by Tom Fulton and featuring every Equity actor in town.

Ralph Fiennes won a Tony Award for Best Actor for playing Hamlet in 1995. The next year would provide us a high-profile, star-studded film adaptation about which I have so many thoughts.

To be continued.

Hamlet & Me (Part II)

Promotional Mailing
Great Lakes Theater Festival, 1989

My third year at Ohio University was Our Shakespeare Year. We hadn’t touched the Bard my previous two years, at all. But the school was producing Romeo & Juliet that spring, so it was necessary to bring us all up to speed. We rehearsed soliloquies for performance, the school purchased a complete set of John Barton’s “Playing Shakespeare” series on VHS.

Side note on the “Playing Shakespeare” tapes. They were expensive and Mother Martha V., our beloved school secretary, kept a close eye on them. They were for classroom use only, they were not to be borrowed, but they could be stolen which we promptly did, dubbing them off and then returning them. Eventually one went missing (not our fault, I swear) and I have ever after lived in fear.

Also that spring, a certain classical theater company* based in Cleveland was producing Hamlet. Directed by Gerald Freedman, the style was very modern, it was promoted as an “angry young man” version of Hamlet. A number of us drove up from Athens to catch a Saturday matinee, but a water main break in the Ohio Theatre meant the performance was canceled, so my friends and I went to see the just-opened-that-weekend Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade that afternoon.

We did get seats for that evening’s performance, which were way up in the vert last row of the thousand seat house. This would be the very first time I would see a live performance of Hamlet. I hated it.

No doubt I had a chip on my shoulder. I was twenty years old. I had spent an entire semester devoted to the works of Shakespeare. I had memorized an entire soliloquy (two, actually) from the great Dane. I knew a thing or two about Hamlet, and about being an angry young man.

Looking back, I am sure I would have enjoyed this production, if it hadn’t been my first. At the time, I found its touches of modernity far too clever. Claudius had a nasal twang meant to evoke that of sitting President George H.W. Bush (folks hate politics in their Shakespeare), the mad Ophelia went topless, and then there was the man himself whose main objective was, as I recall, to be angry.

One of my mentors gave me a very good piece of advice, to wit; Anger is boring. My own rendition of “O, that this too solid flesh,” was peevish, this Hamlet was literally shaking with rage.

At one point he walks on stage, fires up a spliff, takes a mean drag, and begins, “To be …” It brought the house down. I thought, at the time, that that was entirely inappropriate, turning the most famous speech in the English language into a pot-fueled rant.

Hamlet and the Ghost
(Anthony Powell & Peter Aylward)
Great Lakes Theater Festival, 1989
Photo: Roger Mastroianni

I have different opinions today, about cannabis and more importantly, about that speech, which I still haven’t figured out. Opinions differed among audiences, too. Letters to the company in response to the production ranged from the outraged to praise like the following:

“Your exciting, riveting production of Hamlet is just about the most creative and wonderful production I have seen in years. The attention and shock which you elicited from the audience was palpable. No one moved, no one coughed, no one spoke throughout the performance.

No wonder. This modern interpretation of the classic was … so meaningful. Freedman did more than change the costumes and setting; he interpreted Hamlet in light of modern times for a contemporary audience.

Yours is the kind of production that young people must see. Then they will understand that Shakespeare was meant to be seen and heard – not read” - Norman W., Cleveland

I agree with all of that. They received some negative letters, too, though most I read were of the “why do you have to mess with Shakespeare?” variety, criticism lobbed at all modern adaptations of Shakespeare for more than a century, and a point of view I find tiresome. The director himself put it very well, in his Director's Note:

"There is no perfect' Hamlet, or a Hamlet for all seasons and all people. One of the difficulties in producing the play is that each person sees Hamlet in himself or herself. Critics have for centuries encrusted the role with ideas and theories that have biased readers to various interpretations. The theater is the place to experience him."  - Gerald Freedman

And at least I finally saw it. The entire play, beginning to end, performed by a professional company. Only ten years later I would attempt to direct it myself, and my intention would also be to create an exciting, riveting -- and modern -- production of Hamlet.

To be continued.

Source: GLTF Spotlight, August 1989, Vol. 4, No. 3

*Full disclosure, my employer is Great Lakes Theater.

Hamlet & Me (Part I)

"Heaven and earth, must I remember?"
Spring 1989

Junior year at Ohio University, I was preparing a soliloquy from Hamlet, the one that begins “O, that that this too, too solid flesh …” The day I presented it in workshop for our voice and movement teachers, I was asked why I had chosen this particular piece.

I could have been honest and said, “I don’t know.” I could have said it was the first monologue in the first script I picked up yesterday. I can’t remember what I actually said, but I am sure I tried to bullshit my way through. I was worried I might be asked to choose a different piece, and I’d already worked on this one for over an hour and I did not want to start again.

But they wanted to know, what interested me about the character? Why Hamlet? And the more they asked, the more embarrassed and defensive I became because the fact was, I knew nothing about Hamlet.

I was fortunate enough, attending Bay High School in the early 1980s, that I could still benefit from the expansive liberal arts education that had been afforded to the teeming mass of my Baby Boomer antecedents. We weren’t merely offered the same English curriculum provided to every grade level (English I, English II, etc.) but quarter classes in a variety of genres and disciplines.

I took classes in Journalism, radio drama, Death in Literature, and courses in both Shakespeare Comedy and Shakespeare Tragedy. It was like a college curriculum. We even had a quarter course in Vonnegut, if you can even imagine that.

Richard Burton & Alfred Drake
Lunt-Fontanne Theatre, 1964

For Shakespeare’s Tragedies we read Hamlet, King Lear, and Romeo & Juliet (we had all read Macbeth in eighth grade.) We watched the BBC adaptation of King Lear starring Laurence Olivier and John Hurt (1983) and Franco Zeffirelli’s Romeo and Juliet (1968). But we listened to the 1964 Broadway Cast Recording of Hamlet, starring Richard Burton and directed by John Gielgud.

I cannot speak for my classmates, but I absolutely loved these studio recordings. What I remember most was how Burton brought out Hamlet’s great, cynical humor, which I had missed on the page. Wry, sarcastic, incisive, bitter. The guy was an asshole, and so was I.

And so, several years later, it made sense to choose a piece from this play to rehearse for class, but as was normally the case during my undergrad years, I hadn’t bothered to return to the text. I knew nothing about Hamlet.

To be continued.

Twenty Twenty-Four

Thomas Whitely Cullinan
Promotional Photo for "Hamlet"
Bad Epitaph Theater Company, 1999
Photo: Anthony Gray

The next year will mark the twenty-five year anniversary of many important events. 1999 was (literally) another century ago, and at that time I was at once wrapped up in some of the most exciting adventures and also in therapy.

Numbers are arbitrary. However, I was very unsettled at the time about the impending millennium, and hey, I guess my fears were entirely justified. But at the time I was engaged in creating a new artistic endeavor, Bad Epitaph Theater Company, which debuted in April with a production I insisted on calling The Tragical History of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark. With the recent passing of Tom Cullinan, I have been thinking more about that production than I have for a very long time.

I was also engaged in another sense, engaged to be married! My wife and I celebrate out 25th wedding anniversary this summer, and unlike Bad Epitaph, which lasted five years in fits and starts (or my first marriage, which barely lasted two) our romantic partnership has survived, thrived, blossomed, borne fruit … what I’m saying is that we are very happy in our life together.

A quarter century ago I had written one produced play, and I produced it. But since then have written fifteen more new works than have received a full production. It has been three years since my last, Savory Taṇhā (yes, a live zoom production counts, thank you very much) and so I am very glad that in 2024, Talespinner Children’s Theatre will produce my new play script, The Toothpaste Millionaire.

Ralph Hoopes & Tierre Turner
"The Toothpaste Millionaire"
ABC Afterschool Special, 1974

This will be an adaptation of the book by Jean Merrill (The Pushcart War) about a twelve year-old entrepreneur from East Cleveland. This is my first authorized adaptation, my Agatha Christie works were taken from her books in the public domain.

Published in 1972, Toothpaste Millionaire was a book I loved as a kid, because it tells my favorite kind of story; one of creation, promotion, and success. These were the same feelings I had in 1999, as the director and also marketer for a new theater company, producing what was at that time heralded as the “greatest poem” of the second millennium.

Millionaire is aimed at the late elementary school audience, kids aspiring to adolescence, it’s also packed with practical applications of math, and it’s also a history play, subtly acknowledging the mood of the times, and the shifting demographics in one American community.

We look forward, we look back. We always do.

Source: “Hamlet Alone, A Celebration of Skepticism” by Helen Vendler, The New York Times, 4/18/1999

Talespinner Children's Theatre presents the world premiere of "The Toothpaste Millionaire" in May, 2024

Ten Amazing Productions in 2023

Jordon & Orson at "Hadestown"

When did we start posting photos of our programs? I remember all those in early 2016 who went to see Hamilton with the original cast, showing off selfies in the Richard Rogers Theatre, feeling at once joy for whoever was there and also that inevitable pang of jealousy.

Totes FOMO, yo.

Of course, I have also posted a picture of my Hamilton program on Instagram, but also, when I remember to, pictures of the program from whatever show I am seeing, wherever I’m seeing it. It’s a promotion, not a flex (I promise) reminding anyone out there who cares to know that theater is happening, and to encourage others to choose it.

This year I had the opportunity to see a lot of shows, and I want to make more of a habit of this. Since the kids have moved on to college I have taken more opportunities to just go see shows as a regular thing.

Here are ten I caught this year which were amazing (presented in chronological order).

"Scenes From a Night's Dream"
Photo: Rob Wachala

Scenes From a Night’s Dream (convergence-continuum) Yes, I’ll start with one of mine. This was my Master's Thesis, an exploration of the darker corners of my own psyche and I couldn’t have been more pleased with the acting company who realized not only the loopiness of the dream but the dreadful tension of reality.

Hadestown (Palace Theatre) The boy and I saw this show on Broadway, and we were both excited to get to share the touring production with our partners, here in Cleveland. I’m not really a huge musical fan, but I like what I like, and I really think this is the best original musical of the past ten years.

Fun Home (Cain Park) This show is meant to be intimate, which is why it was weird to see the Broadway tour perform Alison Bechdel’s memoir play from the balcony in the Palace seven years ago. The Alma was not only a more suitable venue, but we were seated front row center on opening night. Joanna Cullinan directed this piece with all the sensitivity and humor it deserves.

"Step Nine"
Photo: Steve Wagner

Step Nine (give me your keys) This is another one of mine, a twenty-minute two-hander about toxic masculinity in the theater community. Presented for free in a small room at Parnell’s downtown as part of the BorderLight Fringe Festival, I have been led to understand that a few men about whom I know absolutely nothing were angered that I would write a play about intimate details from their personal lives.

The Last Five Years (Near West Theatre) The main problem with any production of this two-person musical by Jason Robert Brown is that anyone playing Jamie will try to make him sympathetic, but he’s not. Neither is JRB for having written a somewhat cringy roman à clef about his first marriage. The folks at Near West saved the play from itself by queer casting Sarah Blubaugh in the role, who was able to cut to the heart of the role in the way no man could, and by God, she even crafted a mythic spectacle from the much-derided “Schmuel Song.”

"The Last Five Years"
Photo: Amber Patrick

Natasha, Pierre and the Great Comet of 1812 (Great Lakes Theater) People who love this musical really love this musical, but that’s not a lot of people. I came to it entirely fresh and was entirely overwhelmed. This was the best show I have ever seen at Great Lakes Theater. Alex Syiek as Pierre brought me to tears, twice.

Bulletproof Backpack (Tri-C West) Eric Coble wrote a very good script about America’s gun pandemic, and director James Alexander Rankin staged a fast-paced production packed with urgency. And that’s the best kind of art they is.

Merrily We Roll Along (Hudson Theatre) Ever since I heard of this musical’s troubled history, I’ve been fascinated by it. I read the Kaufman & Hart play it is based on, I have been inspired by the backward chronology, I’ve seen the documentary. Songs from this show are now classics. When I heard this production was headed to Broadway I told my wife, we’re going. And it's a hit! People are really starting to get into Stephen Sondheim.

"John Proctor is the Villain"
Photo: Daren Stahl

Purlie Victorious (Music Box Theatre) It is a beautiful thing to see a triple threat like Leslie Odom Jr. tackle a straight play where he still has the opportunity to bring the graceful might of his voice and agility to the work. It is a demoralizing thing that a play from sixty years ago that comments on the state of civil rights in America is just as relevant in the 21st century, but I guess that’s why we do theater, right?

John Proctor is the Villain (Academy for the Performing Arts) Having first read this piece by Kimberly Belflower during the lockdown, I was really looking forward to eventually seeing a production. A high school drama about agency and abuse, I’m very glad I had the chance to see the work executed so expertly by actual teen performers.