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eldritch-blasted-bagels · 2 months

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Excuse my brain rot and the fact that I was a theatre kid BUT-

What Shakespearean Monologue I Want to See Each BG3 Companion Perform

Wyll

“O Soft, What Light Through Yonder Window Breaks” from Romeo and Juliet

Of course. There is no other option.

This man is a hopeless romantic and, I adore him, would not get the point of the play but would have so much fun playing Romeo.

Everyone in the cast would also be hopelessly in love with him.

(Bonus) “Once More Upon the Breech!” from Henry V

Oh this man would KILL this monologue. The battle cry? The rousing of his men against an impossible task? It’s what he was made to do, it’s what the character was built for.

Equal and opposite to how he’d absolutely slay as Romeo, he would make an amazing Henry.

Karlach

“O, Then I See Queen Mab Hath Been With You” from Romeo and Juliet

I almost, almost gave this to Astarion because I think he could also do it justice, but he already had two monologues.

Just… love u Karlach you can say whatever nonsense and I will nod along. Also absolutely ragging on your friend and getting carried away in the bit feels very in character for her.

I feel like she doesn’t really do acting but she would come support her friend’s productions however she could.

Astarion

“To Be Or Not To Be” from Hamlet

Hear me out; I think it would either be so over dramatic or the best damn rendition you’ve ever heard.

Contemplation of mortality, pain, existence? Astarion is at his best when he’s having an existential crisis.

This man was also just built to play Hamlet. You could replace this with “‘Tis now the very witching hour of night,” “O, that this too too sullied flesh would melt” Or any of his soliloquies and what I said still goes.

(Bonus) “Dost Thou Not Suspect My Place?” from Much Ado About Nothing

This is one of the best comedic monologues Shakespeare has to offer and I won’t be told otherwise

Specifically based on the line of Dogberry describing himself as a tasty piece of flesh while also being Dogberry and flouncing about, being hysterical, because someone called him an ass.

(Bonus 2) (Sorry this man is very Shakespeare coded) He would be such a good Puck in A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Just a little shit.

Gale

“O, She Misused Me Past the Endurance of a Block!” From Much Ado About Nothing

Just as I think Astarion was built to play Hamlet, Gale was built to play Benedick.

He’s just enough of an ass but also fucking comedic enough to pull this off and make it hysterical. Like Benedick, he also just keeps talking.

(Bonus) Lear’s Storm Monologues

I think at his worst, Gale could do Lear some fuckin justice in his performance of that specific piece, and that slow descent into madness.

Lae’zel

“I Would Eat His Heart In The Marketplace” from Much Ado About Nothing

It’s a take I’m so here for and I think she’d get really into scolding Benedick for being a dishonorable coward.

Just think about the potential delivery of “Oh! If I were a man! I’d eat his heart in the marketplace!” gives me chills.

I don’t ship Lae’zel and Gale necessarily but I think if you put them in a production of Much Ado together it would be cemented as a bar-standard production.

Shadowheart

“O What a Noble Mind Been O’erthrown” from Hamlet

She kins Ophelia and you can’t tell me otherwise. Also specifically, in this, the context of being used as a pawn by everyone in her life feels appropriate.

(Bonus) Let her play Joan of Arc in Henry VI. I don’t know why she’s so Joan of Arc coded in my brain but let her do it.

Halesin

“All the World’s a Stage” from As You Like It

This one is the one I’m least confident about but the world-weary and worn nature that it can take on feels very Halesin and I think he would do a performance in such a way that it sends you spiraling into an existential crisis.

(Bonus) Minthara

“And Dash’d the Brains Out!” from Macbeth

Again, I just think Minthara would kill as Lady Macbeth.

But, I don’t think “Out damn spot” would be where she shined; I think these moments of absolute murder and ambition would.

Also inspired by the production (in DC I think?) where they had to cut Lady Macbeth literally smashing a baby doll on rocks during this monologue because the audience found it too disturbing.

#this took me way too long please enjoy #I love Shakespeare so much and have brain rot #bg3 #baldurs gate 3 #bg3 shitpost #baldur's gate 3 #bg3 memes #baldur's gate 3 memes #bg3 meme

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laiqualaurelote · 7 days

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star emoji (i'm on pc) for all the men and women merely players?

thank you for this ask for fanfiction director's cut! any director's commentary for all the men and women merely players is going to be insufferably long, especially as it involves literal directors, but I'm going to focus on one of my favourite parts to write, the Hamlet chapter.

stop! Hamlet time

The first thing to know about me is that I am a massive Hamlet nerd. I've studied it academically and watched it multiple times onscreen and onstage, in multiple languages, including Chinese and Lithuanian (I do not speak Lithuanian). Hamlet is a pivotal play in the structure of this fic - it is the "turn" in the magic trick of the "pledge, turn and prestige".

There are seven past/potential Hamlets in this fic: Nate, Isaac, Colin, Dani, Sam, Jamie and Roy. Even though Nate is the one who ends up actually playing Hamlet, what I wanted to set out here is that every single one of them could have been Hamlet, a very different kind of Hamlet, and it's rather a question of when in their lives they could have played this role. Hamlet is one of those paradoxical roles where you need a ton of experience to do it well, yet by the time you gain that experience you might be considered too old (textual clues indicate Hamlet is in his 30s). There are exceptions, of course: Ben Whishaw played Hamlet at 23, Ian McKellen at 84. I imagine Roy played Hamlet before he was ready, when he did not fully understand the role; Sam, similarly, is too young here and Jamie too immature. This is why the role eventually goes to Nate, who intrinsically understands Hamlet best of anyone in the company because of his own existential self-hatred. The one thing he lacks - and that Roy and Jamie have in abundance - is the main character syndrome that Hamlet possesses. He gains this in later chapters, but his insecurity around it leads to disaster. Anyway, my point is that there is no such thing as a single perfect Hamlet because all the Hamlets are valid.

The title of this chapter is "a little more than kin, and less than kind", which is the first line Hamlet speaks in the play. He's using it as a veiled insult of his mother's abrupt marriage to his uncle so soon after his father's death. This chapter deals very heavily with kin - in the sense of family ties, especially parental ones - and kind, in the sense of kindness but also in the sense of being like one another, of the same kind. I think a lot about how Shakespeare is performed, and what kinds of people get to perform Shakespeare, and this chapter explores that.

We open with Nate's dream of playing Anita in West Side Story (a nod to show canon), mixed with his memory of what he perceives as his father's rejection of him. (This is one of the earliest scenes I wrote for this fic, before we got more of an insight into Nate's actual relationship with his father, which was a lot less antagonistic than many of us anticipated). The epigraph to this chapter is from Gertrude to Hamlet: "Do not for ever with thy vailed lids/ Seek for thy noble father in the dust". This is what Nate is doing in this fic, and Ted, and Trent, and Jamie - whether they intend to or not, they've all got their heads down, seeking their fathers in the dust.

Used to be I didn’t know fuck-all about Shakespeare. Where I come from, if you talked about shit like that, they’d rip the piss out of you. I’d have done it myself. I got into a lot of fights back then. Someone’s trying to vex me, I beat the shit out of them. Sometimes I just get so mad and I don’t know where to make it go. You know? Nah, you don’t. Not by the looks of you. I’d probably have beat the shit out of you back then, if I’m honest.

This is Monologue No. 5, Isaac's (the monologues are numbered after the number each player wears in the show). The difference between a monologue and a soliloquy is that a monologue is a speech by a single character, but there may be others onstage; in a soliloquy that character is alone. ('To be or not to be' is strictly speaking not a soliloquy but a monologue, as there are other characters eavesdropping on Hamlet). The four monologues in this chapter all allude to Trent as the invisible, silent listener. In contrast, Jamie delivers Soliloquy No. 9 because he is truly alone.

Cry ‘Havoc’, and let slip the dogs of war. Well that’s fucking epic, Miss Jameela, I said. Well why don’t you take a look at the rest of it, she said. And when I spoke the words out loud it was like something I could pour my rage into. Nothing fancy about it. It were right on. Turned all that anger into something to lend your ears to.

Isaac's entry point to Shakespeare is Antony's speech in Julius Caesar. This was a parallel I had initially intended to give to Roy, who has a clear affinity for Shakespeare's soldier characters, but after Isaac's captain speech in Sunflowers, I realised it should go to him. Isaac, like Roy, has rage issues, which he learns to channel into his acting; like Roy, he comes from a working-class background (I imagine them both being from council estates in South London) and came to acting through community theatre, which is under threat in the UK today because of funding cuts (Christopher Eccleston wrote movingly about this after the closure of the Oldham Coliseum, which was where actors like Bernard Cribbins got their start).

I’m no orator, yeah? Just a plain blunt man that loves his friends.

This is nearly word-for-word what Antony says in his speech at Caesar's funeral, which ironically demonstrates that he is a skilled orator - he deliberately casts himself as "plain" and "blunt" against Brutus' sophistry and succeeds in alienating his opponent in the audience's eyes. This leadership quality of Antony's is reflective of Isaac's own captaincy style - he's a "plain blunt man that loves his friends", even if he can't bring himself to tell them in so many words, and that is how he keeps his team together.

Nate contemplates this. It’s not exactly that they’re short on skulls in the apocalypse. Probably be easier than making one out of papier-mâché, which he’s had to do for a lot of their less scavengeable props, and which is a bit trickier when you have to make your own glue. The problem, of course, is getting the flesh off. How long would you have to boil human bone to get it clean? Beard probably knows. Nate should check with him.

This is morbid - but also, I assure you, a completely accurate depiction of how single-minded props people can be.

Colin strikes a pose with his imaginary skull. “Alas poor Yorick! I knew his fellatio.”

This was an actual piece of graffiti I once saw etched above a fly floor.

I only figured it out when we did Twelfth Night in sixth form. It was an all boys’ school, so some of us had to do the girl roles. I got Viola, the lead. Thought that was tidy. Only at the end I had to kiss the boy playing Orsino.

Colin's monologue is based on a real anecdote, but in reverse; I knew someone who played Orsino in a mixed school, so he had to make out repeatedly with the girl playing Viola and it did absolutely nothing for him and that was how he discovered he was gay.

It’s funny that we’re doing this now. You a journalist, and me telling you all this. I fantasised about it sometimes, you know, telling everyone. I had nightmares about it. Could’ve gone on not saying anything after the world ended, but then I figured, if I might die any moment, I want to die having lived as a whole person.

I did not think I could top Colin's coming-out scene in the show, so I chose to let it have already happened in this AU. (I then retroactively decided it took place during the one and only time the Richmond Players performed Chekhov.) In contrast, it's implied that Trent still hadn't come out prior to the apocalypse, and that he is inspired to do so to Colin here.

“If he’d just made up his mind earlier it could all have been over by Act Two,” Roy is saying. “Macbeth would’ve done it. Othello would’ve done it. Fuck, even Romeo would’ve knocked Claudius off before making a puppet show about it.” “But that’s why they’re tragedies, you see,” Trent argues. “They’re all in the wrong story. Hamlet wouldn’t have killed Desdemona, or assumed Juliet was dead based on hearsay.”

I am quite fond of "the tropes are hungry and the hero is in the wrong goddamn story" discourse. There's no point complaining that Hamlet the play is too long and the hero needs to make up his mind. He can't, because he's Hamlet! that's the tragedy.

When I was a boy, there was this travelling theatre company that went around the vecindades, and they performed Shakespeare in the courtyards. We sat on our doorsteps and watched them. In the last scene they threw a big party, and they knocked on all the neighbours’ doors and brought them out to dance. I thought, if this is what theatre is like, then theatre is life!

The play in Dani's monologue is based on the vecindades staging of Othello by Arturo Ramírez and Martín López Cruz (an anachronistic reference, since it took place in Mexico City in 1988, meaning that Dani would not actually have been alive to see it). I'm fascinated by this particular site-specific staging because it was so calibrated for the vecindades, literally bringing the action to their doorstep - it was a staging that drew on the sense of community in these multi-family dwellings but also implicated said community in the tragedy, because they all ended up witnesses to Desdemona's murder. (A headcanon for this AU is that Dani played Desdemona opposite Sharon in the Richmond Players's gender-bent version of Othello).

On the one hand, Dani is the least likely candidate among the seven, because he is fundamentally too cheerful to play Hamlet. On the other hand, I think he would have turned the entire thing into a telenovela, which I for one would have loved to see.

“If your director, your lead actor and your stage manager are in a burning house right before your show is about to start, who do you save first?” Trent hazards: “The lead actor?” “Exactamundo, Aureliano Segundo! By the time the show’s about to go on, you don’t need the director any more, and your stage manager can take care of themself, or they wouldn’t be your stage manager.”

Again, a joke I've heard among production managers (who are always joking about disasters because a big part of their job is crisis prevention) but one that also reveals how what Ted views as a show of confidence might be interpreted by Nate as hurtful neglect. Also, a One Hundred Years of Solitude reference! No reason, I just always have Aureliano Segundo on the mind.

Did you know that the first recorded performance of Hamlet took place in Africa? English sailors performed it off the coast of Sierra Leone. Some people don’t believe this.

The earliest recorded performance of Hamlet was allegedly in 1607 on board an East India Company ship, The Dragon, lying off the coast of Sierra Leone, though the authenticity of the record has been called into question by some scholars. It would, however, have been performed at the Globe earlier in the 1600s. It's just interesting to think of the already-global nature of the play, even in its infancy, and of Shakespeare as a cultural accessory to colonialism.

I thought you have to sound British when you do Shakespeare, so I tried to do this RP accent, like I heard on BBC. And it was so bad. My father was helping me film the tape and he had this look on his face. I said “Daddy, I got to do it like this. They got to know I can play their roles the way they want.” And he said, “No, Samuel. You got to let them know that the way they want is your way.” So I did the monologue in my own accent, and we sent in that tape. And I got in.

Accent work in theatre is a sensitive subject that is quite close to my heart (though I live in the UK, I'm not British and don't have an English accent, which is something I'm always conscious of). Also: what does a decolonial approach to Shakespeare look like? Is it even possible? Is that what Sam's doing here? Questions, questions.

The fandom discourse around accents was also at the forefront of my mind when I was working on this chapter, because of an ask I had received about writing Jamie's POV - the asker was (rightly) concerned about how I would be depicting the Mancunian accent, as many in fandom were phoneticising it, which is considered offensive. This chapter contains five distinct character voices and for each one I listened to/read multiple sources to find subtle ways to depict the unique elements of that voice accurately and respectfully.

People always assume I want to play Othello. And I mean it is a great role, don’t get me wrong, but I don’t want to do Othello. I don’t want to do Aaron. I want the roles that everyone is up for. I want to do Hamlet. I want to do Romeo. I want to do Lear.

This is, IRL, what Toheeb Jimoh is doing! He's played Romeo, he's playing Hal in Henry IV, I can't wait to see what he takes on next.

This is also a complete coincidence (I conceptualised this chapter before S3E7 aired) but Nonso Anozie, who plays Sam's father Ola, holds the Guinness World Record for the youngest actor to play King Lear professionally, aged 23 in a 2002 RSC production. That's why I made Lear the favourite play of Ola in this AU, and had Sam make the (otherwise quite off-beat) choice of Cordelia's monologue for his RADA audition tape.

You know, when Orlando first comes onstage, he is talking about his father, who is dead. I don’t know if you could tell, the first night when you saw me in the role, but I almost could not do it. I almost could not speak those lines, because I do not know if they are true.

While it is left open-ended in the fic if Sam's parents are still alive, I like to think that they are. I like to think that he makes it back to Nigeria eventually - perhaps even soon after his successful run as Hamlet in the fic's epilogue, when international ship travel is revealed to be back on the cards - and that he sees them again.

“Am I a coward?” says Nate softly. [...] “Who calls me villain?” It is as if Nate is outside himself, his mouth speaking words unbidden, his nerveless fingers letting the book fall. “Breaks my pate across? Plucks off my beard, and blows it in my face? Tweaks me by the nose? Gives me the lie i' the throat, as deep as to the lungs – who does me this?”

When I was watching Nate's villain arc in S2, these lines from Hamlet blazed across my mind, and from that moment on I always subconsciously associated Nate with Hamlet, but a Hamlet who loathes himself to a nigh paralysing degree. Nate may fancy himself a villain of Richard III's ilk, but he simply does not have the evil chops. He's just insecure, indecisive, prone to seeing insult when there is none.

He’s watching himself now. He’s standing across from himself as he delivers the lines seared into his brain, fascinated and horrified. He watches his own throat work, sees the spit fly, feels it strike beneath his eye and roll down his cheek like a tear.

Mirrors are significant in Hamlet - it is, after all, the play that gave rise to the idea of art holding a mirror up to nature - and I wanted to find a parallel for Nate's ritual of spitting at his reflection, which was hard, because mirrors are not abundant in a post-apocalyptic AU. I found the answer in a stage direction from Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead, in which Hamlet spits at the audience, then wipes his face as if his spit has been blown back at him by the wind.

Nate's flashback to what really happened with his parents fills in the blanks for the reader - his father pushing him away wasn't rejection, but his last act of love for Nate. And Nate knows rationally that there was nothing he could have done to save them, but he will always be haunted by having been the one to walk away.

A terrible emotion swamps Nate's chest. A little more than hope, and less than fear. “The play’s the thing,” he says.

"A little more than hope, and less than fear" is a callback to the chapter title "a little more than kin, and less than kind".

The full line that Hamlet says is "The play's the thing/ Wherein I'll catch the conscience of the king." He's conceived a play-within-a-play to prove Claudius' guilt and provide him with the impetus to actualise this revenge business.

Throughout this chapter, the question of whether a play is "real" or "not real" comes up repeatedly - Colin: "I was scared of what it meant if it wasn’t acting. If it was real"; Dani: "And they say, but that is not true. Theatre is only pretend"; Sam: "Maybe one day I will see him again. And all this will only have been lines in a play". And of course a play isn't real, a play is only pretend. Ted Lasso isn't real. This fic isn't real. But that's not to say they're not holding up a mirror to our reality, the reflections in which have the power to affect us and shape us and change us in very real ways. That's the thing about plays. The play's the thing.

#fic ask game #procrasktination #ted lasso #ted lasso fic #shakespeare #hamlet #long post

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basedkikuenjoyer · 2 months

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Okay, Dub Hamlet is a national treasure. First of all, this scene here? Where he and the others are pondering the mystery of a detached pair of legs? "Perchance a dream?" Excellent. Nice little nod to the play and especially after seeing a few samurai movies that work in Shakespeare references I do think that's somewhat intentional with Hamlet so a nice bonus in English.

Nowhere near as good as what came after. When they're sorting all this out and Usopp explains how Kin's legs are talking...Hamlet remarks how he must learn this skill. I love you giraffe man.

#one piece #anime addons #hamlet #otama #speed #episode 1055

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theicarusconstellation · 5 months

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books you read that made you go oh man regulus would love this?

THE SECRET HISTORY BY DONNA TARTT!! (hence why i’m writing a tsh jegulily au lmao [i also think he’d like the goldfinch but not love it iykwim])

anything and everything dostoyevsky

the picture of dorian gray (obviously) by oscar wilde

anna karenina and war and peace by leo tolstoy

madame bovary by gustave flaubert

these aren’t books but he’d definitely have collections of edgar allan poe and emily dickinson’s works

jane eyre by charlotte brontë

we have always lived in the castle by shirley jackson

dracula by bram stoker

frankenstein by mary shelley (i also oddly think barty would like this and relate to frankenstein’s monster)

the count of monte cristo by alexandre dumas

little women by louisa may alcott, though he’d never admit it (he’d kin amy)

also not books but macbeth, julius caesar, and hamlet by shakespeare

anything involving the tragedy of orpheus and eurydice

i’m on the fence about how he’d feel abt les mis by victor hugo

#joliette’s reggie reg #regulus black #asks #marauders #book recs

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pepsinister · 1 year

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the other night I listened to a podcast about hamlet, hosted by a bunch of professors, and they posited an idea I hadn’t heard before… that Yorick was Hamlet’s real father figure, because the king was out conquering and waging war

and (half asleep) it really got me feeling like “damn… hamlet is MY kid… I raised that boy I’m so proud”

Edit I do NOT kin Shakespeare characters my mother was just an english major. if my dad had his way I’d be a Wolfgang

#hamlet is such a play of doubles and parallels and reflections…. it’s so obvious in hindsight that Yorick is a counterpart to the dead king #as opposed to only being a specter of death before hamlet goes and Dies #fuck me they’re even both dead.#nevermind that um. hamlet very clearly was not raised right lol #I would not be proud to have raised that boy

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straydogkins · 2 months

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˚☽˚｡⋆. | Hamlet (emo, punk and rock) playlist

♛. King for a Day- Pierce the Veil FT Kellin Quinn ♛. Boulevard Of Broken Dreams- Green Day ♛. Hum Hallelujah- Fallout Boy ♛. This is how I disappear- My Chemical romance ♛. Demons- Get scared ♛. Throne- Bring me the Horizon ♛. Ex-Mørtis- Ice Nine Kills (TW for major flashing in the video) ♛. My Life Before My Eyes- Famous last words ♛. Brick by Boring Brick- Paramore ♛. Queen for Queen- Motionless in White

#🫧 | edits #playlist #hamlet #hamlet kin #shakespeare #litreture kin

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dragon--sage · 3 months

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astarion is hamlet, cazador is claudius..... walk with me.....

CLAUDIUS But now, my cousin Hamlet, and my son— HAMLET A little more than kin, and less than kind. CLAUDIUS How is it that the clouds still hang on you? HAMLET Not so, my lord; I am too much i' the sun.

this came to me in a vision. basically it all started with the line "i am too much i' the sun". it obviously speaks to the literal sun in astarion's case (hamlet's not a vamp that we KNOW of) but there's also the play on "son" here that shakespeare actually intended (lmao), and the idea that he's too much under the influence of the king, in this case, claudius aka cazador.

and the line "a little more than kin, and less than kind". the idea that those closest to you have the potential to treat you the worst of anyone. which would perfectly describe cazador's relationship to all seven of his spawn.

blah blah blah a bunch of other stuff and THEN hamlet finally has to rise up at the end of the play, and kill claudius, who has been undone by his own feeble and cowardly attempts to hold on to his power.

is there something here? maybe nothing more than a fic title. but i can't stop thinking about this so now hopefully i'll rope a couple of you into this too lmaooooo.

#astarion #cazador #bg3 #baldur’s gate 3 #writing #fanfic

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butchhamlet · 2 years

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If you could see only one (1) shakespeare play performed at the globe when bill was still alive, which one would it be, and why?

i know the obvious answer here is hamlet, but that's also obviously wrong. that shit was four hours of suicidal soliloquy and i have adhd. also i kin hamlet too bad to see someone else play him and i would have to attack them like a feral dog adn then the elizabethan club bouncers would beat me to death. the other obvious answer is lear but i have seen lear in person and i know that it feels like being clubbed over the head. so i would have to go for julius caesar so i could irritate the other groundlings by doing flappyhands in the audience every time blorbo from my rome was up there & then afterward i could run backstage to ambush william and chatter at him about his aeneid reference in that cassius 1.2 speech

#max.txt #asks #is this helpful. i'm so sorry

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lesbiancassius · 2 years

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Hamlet @ the Stratford Festival

I had the chance to catch Hamlet at Stratford this year, and oh my God, Amaka Umeh is a force of fucking nature and probably the best Hamlet i’ll ever see in my life. It was overall a very good production despite some Stratford Festival-itis and directed by a man disease, mostly because Amaka Umeh...was on stage.

oh no, tumblr user lesbianedmund! you cry. i don’t live in canada and/or i don’t have the money to see it!!. fear not. i took copious notes. also it’ll probably be online w/ stratfest @ home, so eventually it may be dispersed to the masses. and you can watch Amaka Umeh do to be or not to be in 2020. it’s amazing. all the details are beneath the cut and there are many.

first off. Amaka Umeh (she/they/he) is the most amazing Hamlet I have ever seen. They are the definitive Hamlet. Why are we still making Hamlets when their Hamlet exists. She delivered monologues in ways I never thought of. She was so alive as Hamlet it was insane. For real I think they’re the best actor I’ve ever seen. Adjoa Andoh type of compelling. I don’t think I can really exaggerate how fantastic he is.

before you ask: no Fortinbras. Gertrude could not see the ghost. Gertrude knew the wine was poisoned. Hamlet’s madness was not really fake. Ophelia did not hear to be or not to be.

overarching thoughts: so much Stratford Festival syndrome acting in this. ie boring as fuck acting. like they’re saying words. they’re even saying the words really well. but jesus christ it’s so boring. it feels so dead and i can’t put my finger on why. hate it

Hamlet was beyond amazing. Horatio was good, Laertes was good, loved the players scene (SOOOO amateur theatre it was perfect down to the ukulele), r&g were good, Polonius i warmed up to, Claudius, Gertrude*, and Ophelia were just so boring, ghost was too standard ghost-y & i hated that. also, I think it didn’t do its women very well

* I saw a Gertrude understudy, and not Maev Beaty, so my Gertrude thoughts might be different than someone who saw the main cast Gertrude

there was really annoying underscoring at some parts, especially the ending. fuck underscoring in theatre i didn’t come to see a movie i came to see a PLAY

before the play started there was a glass rectangular coffin on stage with the dead Hamlet Sr in it. the set had two levels and it’s a thrust kind of stage. on the top level there was two-way glass making a little box kind of deal which could be mirrors or another part of the stage very cool

the second scene opened with the coffin of Hamlet’s father being covered with a tablecloth and Hamlet was standing at the end of it (back to centre audience) and was very upset

everyone gathered around to clink their glasses but Hamlet just leant back in his chair and drank the whole glass. Laertes was wearing a shirt with butterflies on it under his suit? fashion icon

just the way ‘a little more than kin and less than kind’ was delivered was my first clue that this was going to be something absurdly fantastic. Hamlet did the whole thing very obviously grief-stricken. half his lines sounded like he was about to burst into tears and it was just. so. good.

the ‘o’ in o that this too too sullied flesh was so raw. that’s how you do the shakespeare guttural ‘o’ sound. yeah. also the o god! god! was delivered almost like protesting the fixing canon gainst self slaughter part. so good.

Laertes and Hamlet had a secret handshake which was hilarious

Ophelia and Hamlet made out with ophelia sitting on the coffin table which is. something i mean we know that hamlet thinks that’s his dad’s coffin so.

when Hamlet says ‘methinks i see my father’ to horatio, he whips the tablecloth off the table and

IT’S JUST A NORMAL TABLE. NO DEAD FATHER. IT DID NOT MOVE. GOD I LOVE THEATRE AND PRACTICAL EFFECTS.

and then the ‘in my mind’s eye’ was very rushed and Hamlet was clearly stunned by the fact that it wasn’t the coffin.

the ghost was really boring however the super low fog rolling across the steps of the stage looked fantastic. also the ghost of Hamlet Sr. saw Gertrude and Claudius like. making out in the two way glass cube

the Polonius and Reynaldo scene was actually kind of funny! however I think Polonius losing his train of thought should maybe have been sprinkled a little more through the play because my aunt thought the actor just corpsed lmao

Hamlet’s letters were all texts

to overhear Hamlet, Polonius called Claudius and put his phone in his pocket and Claudius and Gertrude went out in the hall. Polonius stood under the top layer of the stage, and then

enter Hamlet above doing to be or not to be. they moved it! wild.

i reallllllly wish they did more with this. like how worried is Gertrude now? give me more. but super interesting in concept? however ‘Hamlet is a suicide text, it’s time to teach it like one’ has given me strong opinions about ophelia having to be there for the monologue

and then Hamlet went into his fake madness and messed around with Polonius. all of Polonius’ asides were done to the phone in his pocket.

Rosencrantz hit his juul like 8 times during this scene. also r&g and Hamlet had a secret handshake too.

the players were fun. the one guy started doing all the world’s a stage before hamlet got him doing the right monologue

they put this weird little like mic pack on Ophelia’s thigh and then she had a little thing around her neck or ear? so they could listen in?

going to be honest i don’t know why they did this. did you just want ophelia to untie her wrap dress. this is what i mean about directed by a man disease

Hamlet was just so confused about everything and then lashed out it was. ow. dude i don’t think this is a joke anymore ahahah

also when Hamlet said as a crab move backwards he took a selfie with Polonius. that whole bit was so fuckign funny

Horatio filmed Claudius on a phone during the mousetrap

Polonius pretended to be stabbed when he was reenacting being Julius Caesar it was funny he did et tu brute and Hamlet pretended to cut his throat

also the band played that ushering in music they play outside of the theatre (bc stratfest is like that) before the play for the mousetrap except now they have Danish flags on their instruments instead of stratfest ones

the play opened with four of the players on stage one of them playing the ukulele and singing a goofy song it was SO amateur theatre

when Claudius shouted for the lights to come up the house lights came up and it was intermission

Claudius’ ‘my offence is rank’ monologue was done TO Polonius!! he confessed to Polonius! and Hamlet didn’t hear it at all.Cclaudius was clearly kind of torn up about what he did and feeling guilt but he was still boring. lol

Polonius was shot through a curtain and Lo And Behold he was shot in the place where Hamlet pretended to stab him while he was pretending to be caesar

Gertrude also could not see the ghost and hamlet was so distraught

Hamlet was almost apprehended by some guards while he was walking around waving a gun after killing Polonius and he set it on the ground then went BLEH!!! and ran off

in the two way glass box we saw Ophelia discover the dead body of Polonius and she screamed but instead of noise it was like this cool discordant trumpet sound?

Ophelia was so boring. like it was just not. also she was wearing a medical gown and…an ankle monitor?

when Laertes came back he was wearing a puffer jacket and a black bucket hat.

i think he and fanny pack Tybalt from the 2021 r+j would be friends

the first gravedigger had his worksuit unzipped and he had a skull tattoo also the other gravedigger was actually the priest. he was smoking

at the ‘a tanner will last you nine year’ Hamlet and the gravedigger (who are both dark-skinned and playing on the word tanner as in darker not like profession) fist-bumped

alas poor Yorick was delivered kind of sadly at the start? was very very very good

when Hamlet realized the funeral was Ophelia’s he just hugged Horatio for a very long time :((

you know Amaka Umeh is a great actor bc they managed to deliver ‘would eat a crocodile’? as frightening. not a SINGLE PERSON laughed in the whole ass festival theatre.

when the duel was proposed to Hamlet, Horatio kept gesturing ‘no’ and shaking his head

at some point hamlet kissed Horatio on the cheek but i don’t remember where

Laertes accepted Hamlet’s apology and they did their handshake again

also, at the start Hamlet was in all black and now he’s in all white: Laertes was in red, then white and black, and now all black.

Gertrude realized the drink was poisoned and stopped hamlet from drinking, and the i will my lord was super interesting.

also Claudius kind of willingly drank the poison

the final monologues from Hamlet are something i WISH i could just revisit again and again they were so well done. so complex. not just one note i’m dying but fear and wonder and amazement and collapsing and oh god it was AMAZING. Horatio held Hamlet and the final ‘the rest is silence. O!’ was done almost with euphoria? like it was just so beautiful and interesting

it ended with ‘flights of angels’, lights went down for a moment then picked back up in a strobe thing and we saw the shadow of king hamlet and Horatio goes “who’s there?”

what the fuck. what the fuckkkkkk. cyclical nature of tragedy *starts bawling*

it was so good i forgot they cut fortinbras

#hamlet #stratford festival #it was so good but only bc of amaka umeh. stratford festival you should #hire actors who aren't 45 more often #june.txt

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