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First rule of Hamlet: everyone dies
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May 19, 2009
By Zane Henry
Hamlet
Director: Sanjin Muftic
Performers: Chase Downes, Taheera April, DJ Mouton, Keeran Blessie, Malefane Moshuli, James MacGregor, Lynne-Leigh Barendse, Ken Bullen-Smith, Francis Chouler, Trudy van Rooy, Trent Nightingale, Nandi Horak, Lerato Motshwarakgole, Oskar Brown, Nic Davies
Where: Little Theatre
Until: May 30
Rating: ****
Sanjin Muftic's Hamlet is an absorbing retelling of Shakespeare's tragedy.
Jon Keevy's script adaptation fractalises and fragments Hamlet's psyche, raising fascinating questions about his character.
UCT's third-year drama students have lots of fun and deliver some vivid performances.
It's an ambitious experiment that, despite the odd bum note, is a delightful success.
Hamlet, Shakespeare's varsity emo hero, is a bedwetting student who returns home from campus to find his dad dead and his mom married to his uncle.
He goes nuts and everybody dies.
And chances are he flunked his mid-terms, too. Swak.
The production introduces the idea of multiple Hamlets, or at least one Hamlet with all his neuroses filtered through a prism.
We have four actors playing different aspects of the great Dane: the base character, the avenger, the scholar, the griever and the lover (adding new meaning to the frequently uttered royal "we"). To thine own self be true?
Hmm … Indeed …
Hamlet's lines are recontextualised when they are split among the actors and the scenes are restructured.
The play is peppered with treats. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are reimagined as gum-chewing, primped girly-girl manga-geisha courtiers.
Ophelia's madness is given a creepy edge with a couple of unhinged songs arranged by Godfrey Johnson. Leigh Bishop's costume design is sumptuous and richly detailed.
Daniel Galloway's lighting lends depth and tone to the otherwise sparse set of blocks and steps.
The visiting players' re-enactment of Claudius's treachery is cleverly done as an animated film.
The performances are of a high quality.
Those deserving special mention are Trudy van Rooy's Ophelia, Nandi Horak and Lerato Motshwarakgole's cutesy Rosencrantz and Guildenstern and Trent Nightingale's unassuming Horatio.
Most impressive is James MacGregor's gruff, burly Claudius.
Some of the students mistake high volume for high emotion and are given to hysterical overacting.
Muftic and Keevy's Hamlet could easily have fallen prey to indulgence and pretension, but instead enthralls throughout with its Shakespeare meets Fight Club vision.
To see or not to see?
Easy answer.
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