Hamlet...

[fajrdrako]

I saw Hamlet tonight with Beulah, a production by the new Ottawa Shakespeare Company in the newly-built second stage at Centrepointe.

Enjoyed it very much, even though at least one of the reviews I saw called it "Shakespeare for the Twilight crowd." Not really. No vampires.

I love Hamlet, both the play and the character. I love the cadence, the beautiful poetry. I love the banter and the second-guessing and the intrigue. I love the swordplay and the setting - a medieval castle - and most of all I love the melancholy Dane, who for my money is the perfect prototype of the Romantic Gothic hero.

I thought from the ads they would rewrite the story, but no, really, they didn't. The started with corpses on the stage and the dead Hamlet in Hortaio's arms, and Horatio about to tell us what happened. Then we get the play, cut a little, but more or less as Shakespeare wrote it. Starting at the climax, or the ending, or the middle, is fashionable these days: see Castle and Jane Eyre. My favourite bit: the famous Polonius speech to Laertes, "to thine own self be true", is delivered in the departure lounge of an airport. Ophelia is listening to music on her iPod.

My second favourite bit: Hamlet kisses Ophelia in the "get thee to a nunnery scene", and then later embraces and kisses Horatio in the scene where he's talking about how much he loves him. Oh, yeah, this is my kind of Shakespeare.