The Melancholy Dane

There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,
Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.
--Hamlet, Act 1, Scene 5

Yesterday, my friend J visited, which was very fun. (she is an '08 WSC grad who I haven't seen in over a year). And we went to see Hamlet! I have never been an "oh-my-gosh-Shakespeare" person, but Hamlet is my favorite. The lovely (and talented, I guess) Jude Law was playing the lead. We thought it would be unlikely that we would get the cheap-seat, day of performance student tickets, but we decided to try. When we got to the Broadhurst theater, there was a tiny line, and we got the tickets with no problem (seriously, I can't recommend enough the day of performance tickets--the seats are good, and the price is SO much better!!)

We had a few hours to kill before the matinee, so we walked by Rockefeller Center where they were setting up for the Tree Lighting, window shopped along 5th Ave, and got sandwiches from a deli to eat in Central Park. I dragged her to the Frick, which had a special exhibit on Watteau drawings. After the show we got some ice cream (healthful, yes) and appetizers and drinks, saw a mass exodus of people en route to the tree lighting, and witnessed an anti-war protest in Times Square. There weren't that many people, but megaphones tend to make me skittish (my friends and I were accidentally in an anti-police brutality riot in Montreal while on spring break, long story). Nothing too crazy happened though.

As for the play--well, it was awesome. Jude Law was good, if different. His Hamlet was mad, not in a crazy sense, but in an ANGRY sense. And with good reason--his father dies and his mother marries his father's brother not 2 months later. What I didn't realize from just reading the play is that it is really funny at certain points, especially in the scenes between Hamlet and Polonius. I thought this Polonius, Ron Cook, was very good. Ophelia was beautiful but ho-hum...I wasn't overly sad when she died. (Hamlet, however, died very beautifully.) The sets were cool too, very minimalist, dark, and gulag-like, as were the costumes, and there were occasional pops of color, in a red carpet, glowing purple thrones, or gleaming white of The Players costumes. There was also fake snow during the "to be or not to be" soliloquy, which looked neat.

The audience, which was a lot of high school kids, was generally well behaved, with only a few cell phone buzzes. The guy behind me kept falling asleep, but he left after intermission. I admit to feeling a bit sleepy myself, as the play is 3 1/2 hours long, and towards the end the soliloquies pile up. What was wonderful is that it was enunciated well and I could hear everything; even if it didn't register what the words meant, exactly, they just sounded lush and elegant. And sure, Hamlet is misogynistic and kind of a pill (I wrote some paper in high school on Misogyny in Hamlet, but I don't remember what I said, except I was angry at how he treated Gertrude), but he is also pitiable and sad. It was a wonderful way to spend an afternoon.

Here we are looking cute, if damp, in the rain:

But we don't look quite as cute as this guy (even if he is anguished):


Here's a story on it all from the NY Times, and an actual review from that same august (read: pretentious?) newspaper here. And here's "What a Piece of Work is Man," from Hair, a gorgeous string of words from ol' Shakespeare himself.