I had the pleasure of seeing Hamlet live for the first time. I saw it at the Mark Taper Forum and it was an absolutely wild experience. The show closed recently so I wanna talk about it!
I got to see the understudy for Hamlet perform which I was really excited about. He was amazing and I loved his portrayal of Hamlet. This version of Hamlet crafted by the team felt like a real person. He wasn’t overly emotional nor was he stoic , instead he showed most of his feelings through his gestures and little quirks. However, he didn’t shy away from a strong emotional performance when the text called for it.
This Hamlet was a nepo baby, instead of actual royalty his family was Hollywood royalty. Elsinore was a very successful production company and Hamlet was a brat who had gotten all he had ever wanted. I was unsure how to feel about this change but it worked really well. All of the characters fit so well into this world. Claudius, Gertrude, and Polonius played the “shady Hollywood executive but they’re Shakespeare characters” really well. I cannot get over the performances of those 3, I’m willing to say that they were the best Claudius, Gertrude, and Polonius I have ever seen and I got to see them live which was a real treat. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern were also highlights. They were played as people you really would find at college and they were hilarious. Guildenstern was your average dumb frat bro and Rosencrantz gave me major computer science major vibes which I think says all I need to. It was fantastic.
Hamlets romances were also incredibly interesting. He was not only romancing Ophelia but also Horatio. Hamlet shared intimate moments with both characters.
I found Horatio's performance very interesting. He was clearly played as a gay man which is fine (and I personally see Horatio as being gay) but typically Horatio is played to be more traditionally masculine since he is meant to be the perfect man in Hamlet’s eyes. However, it worked really well. Horatio would comfort Hamlet and soothe him when his emotions ran wild, he was extremely loyal which I’ll touch on more later. He was clearly very scared for Hamlet and held onto him in most of their scenes. I always appreciate a good queer Hamlet and Horatio and their relationship was messy which worked perfectly in this adaptation.
This was a modernized production so there were some changes to the text which I didn’t mind because it was hilarious. Some of my favorite moments include:
Hamlet asking the player “can you TikTok the murder of gonzogo?”
The pantomime is a “put a finger down” bit
After his plan to catch Claudius worked Hamlet yelled “Alexa play music” and started rapping along to the song.
The gravedigger entered with headphones on singing along to the music.
Horatio says “so Rosencrantz and Guildenstern got got?”
When Hamlet asks Horatio to swear on his sword he is asking for head.
When Hamlet asks Rosencrantz and Guildenstern to play upon this pipe he is asking them for head.
Guildenstern hands his phone to a member of the audience and has them record him doing a TikTok dance, he then took a selfie with them.
An aspect I found really interesting was that a lot of lines in Hamlet’s soliloquies were pre recorded and echoed as he recited them. For example, in to be or not to be this ghostly recording of Hamlet's voice would say “to die” and the hamlet on stage would respond “to sleep.” It was one of my favorite aspects of the production. Hamlet was talking and arguing with his inner voice and it played extremely well. It was such a strong choice that really highlighted Hamlet's mental health struggle.
The play was set up an awful like a movie with its transitions. Oftentimes instead of having characters exit they would have the stage shift lighting and the actors walk to their next position and on the screen behind them it would say something like “two weeks later.” It was really cool and unique, I really enjoyed this aspect.
Now is where it gets weird, the first half of the play was a speedy version of Hamlet with Shakespearean text up until Hamlet and Laeretes decide to fight. They cut out quite a bit, most notably Ophelia’s madness and Laertes return. I was disappointed by this when I realized we were at the end but then I received the biggest plot twist of my life.
Suddenly, the play switched tones entirely. It was no longer a Shakespearean tragedy but instead it was a noir detective film. Detective Fortinbras (yes they made Fortinbras a detective). Was interviewing Horatio all in modern speech about the duel. (A moment that stuck with me which I must share is when Fortinbras questioned Horatio trying to kill himself and Horatio told him that Hamlet was the love of his life and that he didn’t want to live without him.)
Fortinbras brought out other survivors and began questioning them on what happened when a crazy plot twist happened, out walks Ophelia who had faked her death.
Usually when people say that Ophelia faked her death it was so that she could be with Hamlet but not in this production, in this one Ophelia fakes her suicide so that she can escape from Hamlet and Elsinore which was an incredible take.
During this whole noir detective bit they do flashbacks to unseen moments in the first half all in modern English. This whole second half is hilarious which I admit I was unsure about at first. It was an insane tonal shift that felt very out of place. However, the more it continued the more I got into it.
We got to see a flashback to Ophelia and Laertes speaking (side note: Laertes and Rosencrantz were played by the same performer and he was crazy good). Getting to hear Laertes and Ophelia fight as siblings in modern English was such a treat. Laertes tells Ophelia to stop sleeping with Hamlet because Hamlet sucks and that he’s fucking Horatio and Ophelia responds with “who isn’t fucking Horatio.” Polonius also tells Laertes to not be a whore.
We also get a flashback to Hamlet going to Ophelia’s room with a giant teddy bear acting like your typical whiny ex.
We flashback to Polonius, Gertrude, Claudius, and Ophelia trying to figure out what to do with Hamlet. They talk about how Hamlet thinks he’s in a Shakespearean tragedy. We also see Claudius decide he’s going to kill Hamlet.
Basically, almost every scene skipped in the first half is in the second half as a flash back in modern English and noir style. The player (who is called Brad Pitt), Polonius, Claudius, Rosencrantz, and Guildenstern all do coke and a coked out Claudius goes to do his confession while a coked out Brad Pitt pretends to be a priest and a coked out Polonius goes to hook up with Gertrude.
Yea so this production made it so Gertrude and Polonius were having an affair and detective Fortinbras comments that there were rumors that Polonius was Hamlet's real father which leaves Ophelia disgusted of course.
We learn a lot of things from these flashbacks:
Gertrude helped Ophelia escape and fake her death
The gravedigger had seen Gertrude kill King Hamlet before Claudius went to kill him
Ophelia told Hamlet that everyone was spying on him and he told her she should get out of Elsinore
King Hamlet was not a good father (or so Claudius claims)
Gertrude was running the whole show and Claudius was just a puppet
Everyone made fun of the letters Hamlet wrote Ophelia believing he could not be so sincere and romantic (this scene broke my heart).
And more, a lot happens in the second half.
More things that happen include:
Horatio getting into a fight with the gravedigger because the gravedigger knew Ophelia was alive and that Gertrude killed King Hamlet so if he had said something Hamlet might still be alive
Horatio refuses to believe that Hamlet was just crazy and he is very adamant that he saw the ghost as well. (Horatio is very loyal to Hamlet in the second half).
Horatio and Ophelia argue a bit over Hamlet and his love for them.
Detective fortinbras calls Horatio “ho-ratio”
A lot happens in the second half in case you couldn’t tell.
Eventually it is revealed that the detective isn’t actually a detective but rather a member of Elsinore production company whose job it is to keep things quiet. He explains that nobody will ever speak of anything that happened ever again and that he’s going to inform the news outlets of a story about a crazed serial killer called Hamlet. He goes on about how it’ll be a story told for generations, plays will be made, movies will be made, and it will live on.
Then, a very intense piece of music played and the screen behind them said “200 years later.” Out walks Claudius, Gertrude, Hamlet, and Laertes all in strange costumes, they act out the final scene of Hamlet as a strange dance all while Horatio watches. When Hamlet falls back, Horatio runs to him and holds him in his arms. On the screen behind them they, in silent movie fashion, show Hamlet’s final words before the stage goes dark.
Needless to say, this production was wild. It was weird, absurdist, hilarious, meta, heartbreaking, and incredible.
I loved how much agency was given to these characters especially Ophelia and Gertrude. I was very unsure about the tonal shift and the new detective take on the story with all of these added elements but the final scene really sold it for me. In order to make someone cry you must be able to make them laugh first and the second half did that wonderfully. Laughing all through the detective bit made the final duel absolutely gut wrenching. The story of Hamlet is one that’s going to be told for hundreds of years and it’s going to keep getting crazier. The play's commentary on that worked so well. I also appreciated it so much because this is what you should be doing with Shakespeare’s works! This was so fun, exciting, and innovative! So many productions by Shakespeare purists are so stale. Hamlet is such a cool story because you can place those characters in any scenario and it will work.
I want more people to have fun with Shakespeare’s works, yes the works are already really good, but these plays allow so much creative freedom. It’s a shame when people don’t use that freedom to do really cool things like this production.
I still have so much more to say about this production so I’ll likely end up making more posts about specific aspects!
