Hamlet Play Review Essay, Research Paper
On Saturday October 14, 2000, the North Carolina Shakespeare festival put on a performance of Hamlet. This show, which was performed at the Carolina Theatre in Durham, North Carolina, was directed by _____________________, who also directed ____________________. ___________________ did a really good job at playing Hamlet, which is a very hard role to act for any actor. Hamlet was produced by the North Carolina Shakespeare Festival, which is a group of actors that travel around NC and the South, running productions of Shakespeare’s many plays. The North Carolina Shakespeare Festival put on a production of Taming of the shrew on October 13, where the actor who played Hamlet played a servant of a rich landowner.
Out of all the players in Hamlet, two that really stuck out in my mind are Hamlet and Polonious. __________________’s portrale of Hamlet was very energetic and believable. Where ____________ was silly and almost humorous in his portrale of Polonious. Two players that really disappointed me in their performances were _____________________ and _________________________. The king, who was played by _______________ was dry and inconvincible, and ______________________ who played Hamlet’s mother was very fake and uninteresting.
Out of the whole play, the scene that struck me as the most memorable was the scene where Hamlet sees his father and makes everyone that is with him to swear that they won’t speak a word of what they saw to anyone or anything. They are all sitting in a circle and Hamlet asks them to swear and then the lights dim and a red light turns on. Then a big ominous voice pounds down from above (it is hamlet’s father) and commands them to swear. This happens many times until all the people say that they will swear.(it is also quite comical.). The scene where hamlet kills Polonious was just as I had expected it to be, where as the scene where hamlet makes his famous “to be or not to be?” speech was nothing like I had expected.
The set that Hamlet was played on was a very simple; on its edges it had two kind of curtanoffed closet looking things. In the back of it there were 2 huge doors, which opened in the middle of the stage. On stage right there was a raised platform about 5-6feet off of the floor with concrete steps going up to it. This stage was simple yet there where places on it for all the scenes to be acted out clearly and the set made some of the scenes easier to understand, in the use of the many different parts of the set.
Seeing Hamlet live is much better than just reading the book, if and ONLY if you have read the book and you go see it. I have read Hamlet and seen the play and all the scenes made much more sense. Also they where all much more vivid than when I was reading the book. When you just read a book, your mind is left to interperate what the scene looked like and what exactly was going on at the time. When you see the play live you actually get to see what the atmosphere during the scene is and what is going on around the characters at the present time. If you are going to go see Hamlet live. I recommend that you read at least some of the play so you know the general gist of what is going on during the story and what all the characters are about. This way you will know the basics already and when you see a part in the play that nobody else knows you can say “Hey!!!!!!!!! I know that. I read about it in act 3!!!!!!!!!”