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.