Hamlet has been staged countless times over the course of the past 400 years or so since it was written. People have agonized over every possible angle of every possible line. The tragedy contains one of the single most beautiful soliloquies in the history of recorded literature. Blood, sweat and every other kind of fluid imaginable have been poured into this thing. This month a few actors will casually trip their way through it onstage with almost no rehearsal as Boozy Bard presents Hamlet as a part of its Shakespeare Raw series.
It works like this: a group of actors arrive at The Best Place Tavern on 901 W. Juneau Ave. They’ve all probably read the script and are quite familiar with the script. (Who isn’t?) The actors pull character names from a hat. They’ve got five minutes to prepare for the show. Then they launch into it while you (you’re coming, right?) and a group of others who have arrived to drink and enjoy some Shakespeare.
What I love about this with respect to the script is that it contains bits of text that will breathe much better without any kind of preparation. Someone will play Hamlet. There will be a Nunnery Scene. The person playing Hamlet has to work out exactly how to negotiate the single most difficult piece of text in all of drama. Get it right (no one ever does) and it’s amazing. Get it wrong and it’s really no different than if they spend hours agonizing over it. There are aspects of Hamlet that defy any possibility of rehearsal. It’ll be fun to go and see them play out onstage as people drink.
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Boozy Bard’s Shakespeare Raw production of Hamlet runs Mar. 14 - 16 at the aforementioned Best Place on 901 W. Juneau. Shows start at 7:30 p.m.
