Hamlet & Me (Part XI)

Edward P. Vining was a Union Pacific executive in the 19th century and a part-time thinker. He independently developed a unique theory regarding the three extant versions of William Shakespeare’s Hamlet: The First Quarto of 1603, the Second Quarto of 1604 and the First Folio of 1623.

Vining believed each subsequent version was a revision of the one previous, each an improvement upon its predecessor on the way to an ultimate, perfect vision of Hamlet which the Stratford man either did not complete or that has been lost to history.

That’s not the unique bit. No, Vining’s grand theory focuses on what he perceived as an increasing “femininity” in the character as these draft progress, as the Dane becomes ever more thoughtful, emotional, and hesitant to act. Soft, if you will.

That Vining's theory is entirely misogynist goes without saying. What is interesting, from a narrative standpoint, is how Vining suggests it was possible that Hamlet was born female, that it was kept a secret, and that she was raised to pass as male. Vining set this all down in his book The Mystery of Hamlet: An Attempt to Solve an Old Problem (1881).

Vining’s theory may have been lost to history, but that it was elevated by Danish film star and producer Asta Nielsen, who used his theory when deciding to play the title role as the premiere offering from her new production company, Art-Film. This 1921 silent film version is quite possibly the best adaptation of Shakespeare’s Hamlet ever made.

Asta Nielsen in "Hamlet"
Art-Film, 1921

Here’s the thing: We know "Young Hamlet was born" on "that day that our last King Hamlet overcame [Old] Fortinbras." A gravedigger tells us so. (HAM V.i) But what if word traveled faster than the old Danish King, and that it was reported that it was he who had been slain? To secure the throne in a time of war, the new mother, Queen Gertrude, announces a son! By the time Old Hamlet returns, the lie has been widely accepted and is held as truth. The girl is raised a prince, only her mother and father aware of the deception.

This is all prologue. The question then is how this all affects her, Hamlet’s, relationships with Ophelia, Horatio, her mother, the new king Claudius, everyone? In 2006, I directed another production of Hamlet at Beck Center for the Arts, inspired by Nielsen’s film, and starring Sarah Morton in the lead, supported by an outstanding company of local artists.

“Since Hansen is experienced and demonstrably astute, there are no embarrassments here and much to appreciate. Most to be appreciated is his shrewd casting of the lady Hamlet. Sarah Morton is a palpably enchanting stage presence – smart, wry, covertly vulnerable and hesitantly self-confident. Properly attired, she's also tall, thin and still tomboyish enough to get away with the physical aspects of the evening's masquerade." - Damico [2]

"Oozing misery and nerves, Morton plays a Hamlet pierced by grief and drunk on death. She handles the language flawlessly, and several of her scenes are the best I've ever seen – her death, and the "nunnery" scene with Ophelia (a sensitive Rachel Lee Kolis)." - Eisenstein [3]

Hamlet & Horatio
Sarah Morton, Nick Koesters
Beck Center, 2006

One of the original aspects of this adaptation, one highlighted in Nielsen’s film, is the love triangle between Hamlet, Horatio and Ophelia. Each love goes unrequited and misunderstood, until the final moments of the tragedy. In the 1921 film, Horatio cradles the dead Hamlet and, in an unintentionally comic moment, discovers her breast. In our 2006 version, Hamlet instead chooses to “out” herself:

“In the final scene, a dying Hamlet places a kiss on Horatio's lips, revealing her true feelings. It's a poignant moment In a credible production of the fiendishly difficult, challenging play, one that keeps the integrity of the language and drama intact.” - Heller [1]

To be concluded.

The complete "Hamlet: The Drama of Vengeance" starring Asta Nielsen and directed by Svend Gade & Heinz Schall (1921)

Sources:
[1] "Review: Hamlet" by Fran Heller, Backstage, 10/16/2006
[2] "Shakespearean Mélange a Trois: A Bardic Orgy of Drag, Gender-bending and Shaky Celibacy" by James Damico, The Free Times, 10/4/2006

[3] "Hamlet @ Beck Center" by Linda Eisenstein, CoolCleveland.com, 10/1/2006

Hamlet & Me (Pre-Show Announcement)

Tom Cullinan, Brian Pedaci & me
Backstage at the Brick Alley Theatre

I was the youngest of three boys, my eldest brother is seven years older than I am, so I got a lot of shit. But my brothers weren't the kind of bullies who beat me up, in fact they never laid a hand on me. 

No, they were all poncy geeks and their friends were, too. The abuse that was heaped upon me was mental, literate snark. I would be mocked for existing, and god forbid I actually did or said anything stupid because I wouldn't only be ridiculed for the moment, there would be callbacks that went on for years.

As a result, I have always been extremely defensive about being made fun of, to the point of being no fun at all. I cannot take a joke, or at least I could not until I met my wife Toni who fills me with such confidence that I became a different person. This is true.

However, allow me to share a moment from my past when I was a complete noodge and ruined a great joke because of my insecurities. When we started Bad Epitaph Theater Company, I was determined that we present ourselves as professionally as possible. 

That included, for example, that the program include the UK model of company bios, where they are not third person narratives but a list of previous work. Some grumbled, but I wasn't about to provide the audience a dozen paragraphs that all begin the same way, "So-and-so is thrilled to be part of this production!"

I also insisted upon a pre-recorded pre-show announcement, which was not the convention at the time. I provided sound designer Walter Mantani with this text to be played right before the show begins:

Good evening.  Bad Epitaph Theater Company welcomes you to the Brick Alley Theatre. We hope you enjoy our performance, which will begin momentarily. First a few announcements. The production will last approximately three hours, with two, ten minute intermissions. Stage fog will be employed during the performance, and a firearm will be discharged onstage during the Second Act. Performers will be using the aisles for their entrances and exits. Please refrain from getting up or leaving the auditorium until an intermission. Out of courtesy for those around you, please refrain from having conversations during the performance, and if you have a cough or sore throat, you might like to take the time now to unwrap any throat lozenges or candy. Please take a moment and turn off any cellphones or pagers. Thank you for your attention, and enjoy the show.

Yes! We had content advisories in the twentieth century. Anyway, it was important information and Walter has such a beautiful, stentorian voice, I wanted it to be his, and not mine.

That recording was not played for the final dress for our first production, Hamlet, however. Instead, they played an alternate version. It was a joke, but I didn't think it was funny and was very direct with Marian, our stage manager, that it never be played again, that under no circumstances should it ever be played before any performance.

I mean, of course she wouldn't. It was a joke. For the company to enjoy. If it happened today, I would howl with laughter. At the time I took it all too seriously. Because I thought I was being made fun of.

So, anyway, here it is! I posted this on YouTube years ago, and people love it, it's gotten over eight thousand views which for me is a lot. Have a listen ... and enjoy the show!

Hamlet & Me (Part X)

Player Queen, Player King
Lee T. Wilson & Pandora Robertson
"Dumb Show" choreographed by David Shimotakahara
Bad Epitaph Theater Company, 1999

Twelve years ago, Cleveland said good-bye to its last full-time theater critic. At that time, I expressed concern over the larger implications of that vacancy. Love critics or hate them, they write theater history.

Thomas Cullinan & Brian Pedaci

Upon the recent announcement that Peter Marks is stepping down from his position as critic for the Washington Post, New York Times critic Jason Zinoman expressed a similar lament.

“The historical record will also suffer. Losing this spot in my opinion matters more than losing a film or book critic because theater is ephemeral. My memories of shows I saw in DC as a kid have faded. The only thing that keeps them alive is the archive of reviews. Reviews mean that theater art lives forever and can keep getting discovered.” - Jason Zinoman on Facebook 12/18/2023

Looking over my journal for Hamlet, I was shocked at how much direct communication I had with members of the print media over that period; calling them on the phone, accosting them in public. It was 1999, and promoting your show exclusively online was not yet a thing. We had a website, yes, but we could only drive people to that through our print advertisements!

No mass theater email lists, no NEOPAL, no social media, none whatever.

Ours was a new theater company and we needed coverage, in print, on paper. Plain Dealer Theater Critic Marianne Evett wrote a preview piece, mentioned our fundraiser in her column, and reviewed the show.

I harangued the guy who wrote a weekly theater round-up for the weekly Free Times to include our events in his column, and was simmering with rage those weeks he said he didn’t have the space. Without coverage, we didn’t yet exist.

But they did cover our work, the critics did come to see our independently produced show. They all came on the same night, which was terrifying for me, what if the power went out? In that space it was entirely possible. But the lights stayed on, as did the heat (another concern) and we were reviewed by the Plain Dealer, the Free Times, and Scene Magazine.

Over the past ten days, I have described several productions of Hamlet. This is how the historical record describes ours.

Jay Kim, Jason Popis
Gary Jones Christine Castro

David Hansen – Cleveland's champion of twentysomething madcap intelligentsia; founder of the antic subversive Guerrilla Theatre (sic) and the edgy Night Kitchen – has happily sought new horizons with his Bad Epitaph Theater Company. [5]

Hansen, Thomas Cullinan and other BETC co-founders Alison (Garrigan), Brian Pedaci and Sarah Morton met at Dobama's Night Kitchen, where the quintet discovered compatible tastes and aims. As maturing, ambitious theater fanatics invariably do, they concluded, "It was time to take the next step." [3]

The group's creative esthetic will be expressed through an unslavish fidelity to texts and a reasonable respect for what's valuable in traditional performance practices. "People coming to us," (Hansen) cautions, "expecting some wild, shocking interpretation will be disappointed." [3]

The Bad Epitaph Theater Company will present their very first production, "The Tragical History of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark," opening April 9 at the Brick Alley Theatre. [1]

Directed by Hansen, Hamlet features Thomas Cullinan as you know who, Alison (Garrigan) as Gertrude and Brian Pedaci as Claudius, supported by a 13-member ensemble. [1]

Alison Garrigan, Tom Cullinan

You’ve got to admire the guts of a new theater company giving birth to its baby with a whack at "Hamlet." [4]

A judicious cutting of the script (reduced by a sixth and shaped into three acts that average an hour each), primarily reliant on following the narrative’s progression with an emphatic clarity, occurring in stripped-down, unspecific, but modernized setting and dress. [4]

Featuring an eclectic and dynamic cast, more grounded in Stanislavsky and psychological realism than in plumy vowels and exalted emoting, Hansen's "Hamlet" emphasizes fast-paced storytelling over poetry and pathos, yielding a robust, energetic production. [5]

The production… is a good one, given clear and thoughtful direction by David Hansen. The publicity has labeled it “in-your-face,” but in fact, the interpretation is straightforward and not at all confrontational or experimental. And the production shows how potent the play can be on its own, with the simplest possible set and costumes. [6]

Using modern dress, ingenious economy, and performers who know how to captivate a wide variety of audiences, this interpretation reproduces in spirit the immediacy and vitality that the original cast production likely flaunted. [5]

Christine Castro

It’s a decided relief and pleasure to report that the Bad Epitaph Theater Company’s most respectable production of the hallowed classic not only justifies a touch of audacity, but, much more crucially, earns the genuine anticipation of the group’s next, hopefully less historically perilous, project. [4]

The guiding force here is clearly director Hansen, who demonstrates a well-defined and knowledgeable understanding of the play, apparent in the production’s major strength — its sharply etched, thoroughly lucid story line. [4]

Hansen propels his three and a half hours without a single traffic jam. [5]

We seem to be reviewing posters lately, so I must say that if (Thomas) Cullinan acts half as well as he looks as the all-in-black modern-dress Hamlet, well, he ought to be dynamite. [1]

Cullinan immerses himself in the complex role, pacing it well and letting you see the fluctuations in Hamlet’s moods. His terror at meeting with his father’s ghost (a strong performance by Hansen), his easy banter with Polonius or the spies Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, his anguish in confronting his mother – all add up to a moving performance. [6]

Marie Andrusewicz

Cullinan is first of all the right thirtyish age — not too callow to have had the required depth of experience nor too old, which would upset the balances of various character relationships. The blond actor’s unmarked features additionally generate a still boyish, brooding self-interest — not to say self-indulgence — that perfectly suits this most unheroic hero. Intelligent, word-obsessed, the often petulant eternal student is caught in an endless analysis of his own inaction until he’s forced to erupt in a violent release. The appealing Cullinan has these aspects well in hand and delivers a secure and sustained characterization. [4]

This is a family drama, whose anguish builds throughout the evening. When Cullinan’s Hamlet dies, having finally brought about his vengeance on Claudius at the cost of so many other lives, you feel genuinely moved, touched, as you should be, by the waste of a promising young life. [6]

In a fearsome performance of finely carved detail that delineates a blighted soul, Brian Pedaci effectively evokes that vital something that is rotten in the state of Denmark. [5]  Pedaci is suitably conniving and slimy as Claudius, who has killed his brother, the old King Hamlet, married the queen and seized the throne. [6] Pedaci’s Claudius is commendable and particularly strong in his devious calculation. [4]

David Hansen

Alison (Garrigan) is also very good as Hamlet’s mother, Queen Gertrude. Looking beautiful and rather lost, she rises to the emotion-filled confrontation with her son in which she learns of her new husband’s treachery. [6]

As Ophelia, Christine Castro is touchingly and authentically sweet. [4] When Ophelia flips her lid, she pistol-whips the entire court with her flowers. As her petulant big brother, Laertes, Jay Kim is boyish, brash, and impetuous. [5]

Some unconventional casting provides new insights into the play. Gary Jones is a stout, vigorous Polonius, a bustling middle-aged snoop rather than an old busybody. Marie Andrusewicz is quietly effective as Hamlet’s loyal friend Horatio; Pandora Robertson gives the Player’s speech histrionic force; and Dawn Youngs has exceptional presence as Rosencrantz, Hamlet’s treacherous schoolmate. [6] Allen Branstein's gravedigger combines the best bits of Samuel Beckett and Walter Brennan. [5]

The Brick Alley (Theatre) is exactly that – a former alley roofed over and made into a building with a long, narrow theater space. Hansen and set designer Gunter Schwegler have put stages on each side, one backed by the building’s brick wall and the other by black and gold hangings. A walkway runs between them, with the audience seated across both ends. [6]

Pandora Robertson,
Allen Branstein

The result might look unconventional, but its flexibility and intimacy adds to the emotional immediacy of the show. [6] Schwegler and Jennifer Linn Wilcox’s scenic and lighting designs nicely adapt to the Brick Alley’s unusual two-sided arena space. [4]

For the academically inclined, yes, the language survives … an ideal introduction for untested Shakespeare neophytes and, for those suffering from overexposure, a perfect way to rekindle an old flame with a sweet prince. [5]

Bad Epitaph, which takes its name from Hamlet’s words to Polonius about the company of actors who have just arrived at Elsinore (“After your death, you were better have a bad epitaph than their ill report while you live”), is clearly a company worth having around. [6] 

Three professionally written reviews for one storefront theater production in Cleveland. Those days will not come again.

To be continued.

[1] “Happier notes” by Larry Gorjup, Free Times, 4/1/1999
[2] Calendar Listing, Editor, Scene Magazine 4/9/1999
[3] “…and the melancholy Dane” by James Damico, Free Times, 4/7/1999
[4] “Heavy Decisions: Of Hamlet and The Old Settler” by James Damico, Free Times 4/14/1999
[5] “Quite the Mischievous Boy: In Bad Epitaph Theater's production of Shakespeare's hit, it's dog eat dog in Denmark” by Keith A. Joseph, 04/15/1999
[6] “Company’s debut delivers potent version of Hamlet” by Marianne Evett, Plain Dealer, 04/17/1999

Hamlet & Me (Part IX)

Newspaper prop graphic for "Hamlet"
Bad Epitaph Theater Company, 1999
Design: Timothy Smith
Photo: Anthony Gray

Notes for first production meeting of “Hamlet”
Bad Epitaph Theater Company
November 11, 1998

The concept of this production, at its most basic, is to present it as what it is. A troupe of actors in a brick warehouse in Cleveland in 1999, putting on HAMLET.

We will not be commenting on the words, or bending them to fit meanings that aren't there.

However, we will be presenting the characters as though they are present in our world today, our audience will be treated to this spectacular story couched in images that are familiar. Kings in suits, guns for swords, local newspapers, beer, etc.

Most concepts are museum pieces, even at their most inspired. It is exciting to take audiences to strange, distant or ancient lands. But for this production, we want them to feel it is happening now, and not only now, but here.

With a contemporary American attitude, while maintaining the dignity of royalty, the fear of the supernatural, and all the sorrow and madness which never will be out of style.

As for Hamlet, I use myself as a guide. A man of thirty, with a past full of ideals and a future full of nothing. He talks about the past as a golden era (which it may not have been) and speaks of the future not at all. We stand on the brink of the Millennium (excuse me) and we don't know what's ahead but we sure know what's behind.

To be continued.

Hamlet & Me (Part VIII)

"Hear the sentence of your movèd prince."
Courtney Brown, Xanthe Tabor, Rich Weiss,
Suzanne L. Miller, David Hansen (Mr. Hansen does not appear.)
"The Most Excellent and Lamentable Tragedy of Romeo and Juliet"
Guerrilla Theater Company, 1994

By the time I turned thirty, I had performed in only two Shakespearean productions, three if you count a pre-recorded voice-over.

Junior year at Ohio University, I played Friar John in Romeo and Juliet, who has three lines. For the Guerrilla Theater production I directed, I played the prince, but my voice came from on high, as though from a public address system. This meant, of course, that I needed not be present for every performance.

I later learned this conceit was also employed by John Gielgud in the 1964 Broadway production of Hamlet, arriving as the Ghost in the form of a massive shadow in the shape of a helm.

A video recording of the Gielgud/Burton Hamlet was released in the mid-90s, and I spent the summer of 1998 watching that several times and taking notes.

Having decided to direct a Shakespeare, you need to decide what version of the play you wish to see and hear, and then cut the script to fit your conception.

Stealing edits from others provided my primary education. The cuts from our college production of R&J were the basis for my production. We had taken a paperback and spent a rehearsal having the cuts dictated to us as each of us crossed out the lines in pencil, so I had them all, not just the cuts for my one scene but for the entire play.

"Mark me."
John Gielgud, Richard Burton
(Mr. Gielgud does not appear.)
Lunt-Fontanne Theatre, 1964

In the time before personal computers, this was really the only way to do it. Today I can make the edits on my laptop and provide the company with a show-ready document. But then they wouldn't have the physical script, to see what was eliminated as well as what was kept. That's fine if you don't want your actors requesting to have lines restored, but what if you do?

I had opinions about what additional material I wanted for my production of Hamlet, and what additional lines I wanted to cut, but using this Burton production as a guide gave me great confidence to have something to begin with.

And in the case of Hamlet, who better to steal from than Gielgud? He was his generation’s Dane, surviving audio recordings are a testament to the style, grandeur and pathos he lent to the role, for decades and in numerous productions. It’s a shame we only have a film version of Olivier’s Hamlet and not his.

I watched the 1964 video, making the same cuts as Gielgud made, and in this way learned about which versus a great person of Shakespeare believed were not as necessary as others. Then I cut just a little deeper. Cutting the text is the director’s first pass at directing their actors, before you even know who those actors may be. You can change the motives and intentions of a character by eliminating certain lines of thought and exposition, or what other characters have to say about them.

I was greatly influenced by Pennington’s book to strip away centuries of assumptions about the characters and established tropes of performance. The goal was to focus specifically on the words they say as written on the page, and not the ways they have been said by others in the several productions I had already seen.

Is the Queen correcting the King for getting the names of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern wrong, or is she changing the order of address to lend their names equal weight as a form of flattery? Because that is what the King and Queen are trying to do at that moment, convince old friends to betray him. 

Does Hamlet know he and Ophelia are being listened to when he asks, “Where is your father?” or is that another way of inquiring, “Where is your keeper?” Because that is in keeping with everything else Hamlet is saying at that moment, you need looking after.

Alison Garrigan, Tom Cullinan
Promotional Photo for "Hamlet"
Bad Epitaph Theater Company, 1999
Photo: Anthony Gray

There are motivations for these deliveries which are clear and obvious, and then there are those which try to think a step ahead of the playwright and detract from the matter at hand.

I did entertain the notion of having Hamlet echo one of the King’s lines from the first scene after the stabbing and the poisoning; “So much for him.” This I did not do, though I did have Tommy punch Brian in the face on the line, “Follow my mother.”

Like “Welcome to Earth.” If you know, you know.

By fall I had my cut. Hamlet might go quite swiftly in three acts, with two intermissions, like this:

• Act One: In which Hamlet goes from "I don't know what to do" (Too, too solid flesh) to "I know what to do!" (The play's the thing.)
• Act Two: In which Hamlet puts on a play, murders the wrong guy, gets exiled to England, and finds he hasn't accomplished anything. (How all occasions do inform against me.)
• Act Three: In which all occasions literally inform against Hamlet and he dies just as he has evolved into a person who might indeed have made a good ruler. 

The rest is silence.

To be continued.

Hamlet & Me (Part VII)

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

Tom Cullinan and I met when he auditioned for a show at Dobama’s Night Kitchen. Having spent some time living in Chicago, he was returning home, so he told me, to look after his mother following the death of his father.

I sat in the house, he sat on a singular chair on the stage, wearing a long coat and, in my mind’s eye, smoking a cigarette. Was he? It is hard for me to imagine that he was not.

The audition in question was for a long-form improvisation inspired by MTV’s The Real World. As I had scant experience in improv, and that his resume said that he had, and in Chicago of all places, I was intimidated. But I have also always scorned men in dusters who smoke during auditions, and so we sized each other up and decided to become friends.

Besides, the fact that I was seated in the position of authority, evaluating him in a theater space he had practically grown up in, I had to respect his équanimité. He became an invaluable player in our late night adventure.

Over the next couple years we would grow close, but not too close. It was good to have a new partner in theater, someone I hadn’t gone to school with, someone with a broader experience than I had, an entirely different creative toolbox. Someone to push me out of my carefully guarded comfort zones.

I asked him to direct my first play, The Vampyres, about a goth coffee house. He suggested we visit New Orleans at New Year’s Eve. You know, as “research.” Goodness, I never would have dared.

Yes, we spent many evenings drinking and smoking, primarily at La Cave du Vin, and elsewhere. Tommy was the toastmaster, the speechmaker. I was always uncomfortable before crowds, he lived to be there. I asked him to be Best Man at our wedding.

Brian Pedaci, Tom Cullinan
Promotional photo for "Hamlet"
Bad Epitaph Theater Company, 1999
Photo: Anthony Gray

However, it was he who made getting too close impossible. I would invite him out for a private evening, just the two of us, and he would bring along one or two. There was a crisis in my relationship with Toni and he simply did not let me talk to him about it. He spoke too quietly in bars. He was pretentious – and not in the same way I am pretentious.

He was complicated. We’re all complicated, but Tommy was really complicated.

My time as Public Relations Director at Dobama Theatre was coming to a close. I’d never worked anywhere for three whole years and I was anxious to move on. I loved my time there, but I was turning thirty and feeling constrained, I guess. I had no idea what was happening next, what I did know was that I had a burning desire to create an epic, independent production of Hamlet, and I knew who I needed to build the company around.

My man is Tom Cullinan. The reasons for him are plentiful. I love him. I can work with him. He is an experienced actor with just the right everyman quality to his personality, but also the right amount of class, charisma and charm. And guile. And romance. And because he’s not perfect.
- December 23, 1997

To be continued. 

Hamlet & Me (Part VI)

Twenty-six years ago today, I decided that I was going to (somehow) direct a production of Hamlet. The following are contemporary accounts from my late twenties, about two books that were major inspirations in the development of my thoughts.

August 4, 1996

Yesterday, Dad presented me with a recently written book called "Modern Hamlets." It's pretty cool. It is a succinct look at a dozen 20th century actors who have played Hamlet, and how they set about performing the soliloquies.

At first I thought this emphasis on the soliloquy was precious. Why so specific, what is the point? A few chapters in and I see how, by zooming in on the soliloquies in specific, and not each performance in general, we get a brief distillation of each actor's Hamlet.

Reading this, reading how the great acting men of this century tackled what some feel is theater's greatest role (if not play) makes me long for directing Shakespeare. "Romeo & Juliet" was difficult, "Hamlet" would be more so, but I would like to try.

January 26, 1997

I can tell you this; thanks to Kenneth Branagh, no one ever has to produce an uncut "Hamlet" ever again. He has done it, he has done it on film, and regardless of what records it broke in the Guinness Book of World Records (first uncut Hamlet on film, longest Shakespeare on film) he has proven without a doubt that producing unabridged it is unnecessary.

However, Branagh's film highlighted all of the stuff that is normally removed. For example, everyone removes Fortinbras and everything to do with Norway (see: the Mel Gibson 1990 film) which robs the story of its depth. Branagh even turned Polonius into a much more political, scheming man, instead of just a doddering old fool, which was infinitely more complex and interesting, and still just as funny.

However, the Broadway 1995 production (Ralph Fiennes) kept all of these elements while still paring down the text. It is hard work, cutting down Shakespeare the right way. But it is also rewarding.

June 24, 1997

"Hamlet: A User's Guide" by Michael Pennington. I got it in England and read it very fast; another amazingly helpful text on the subject of what is most probably going to be my next Shakespeare.

My next project should be called the "Bad Epitaph Theater Company." I can't remember at what point in my life I came up with that one, it's old, I know it is, I don't know who talked me out of it, but if I start with a production of "Hamlet" (and there hasn't been one in this city since 1991) that would be a good name.

Anyhow, Pennington has done this play a dozen times, in most of the leading male roles, even Fortinbras, and has quite a bit to say about the subject.

December 23, 1997

I have finally decided to direct "Hamlet." Pennington reminds us that no one decides to produce this play without having already decided who is playing the main character. I didn’t believe this to necessarily be true until now. I have chosen a Hamlet, and now am obsessed with producing it.

Sources:

"Modern Hamlets and Their Soliloquies" by Mary Z. Maher (Iowa, 1992)

"Hamlet: A User's Guide" by Michael Pennington (Limelight Editions, 1996)

To be continued.