Word: coes
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...current version, director Peter Coe is providing an evening exactly as long as the 1964 production, though naturally his cutting is not the same. In his casting, Coe took two major gambles in engaging a pair of Academy Award winners to play Hamlet and his mother. One of the gambles paid off, and the other didn't. The latter, unfortunately, happens to be Hamlet...
...wonder whether Coe actually heard Christopher Walken play or read Shakespeare before hiring him. The vocal deficiencies I cited in his Hotspur last month have not diminished. I don't want to give the impression that Walken's experience has been entirely in film, when in fact he has done a dozen Shakespearean roles on stage, including Hamlet eight years ago. I should think, however, that a person who has had all these outings and has now arrived at the age of 39 still so ill-suited to Shakespeare's verse would decide to turn his efforts else where...
Quite shrewdly, Shakespeare brings Hotspur and Hal together only for the climatic personal duel at the play's end Here director Coe has made a serious mistake He bade his fight master. B H Barry, to stage the combat so that Hotspur repeatedly gains the advantage and could dispatch the Prince, but repeatedly chooses through sheer bravado to spare Hal and permit him to rearm Hal's combative skill is thus cheapened, and his eventual victory is made hollow, the result of mere chance. (It is, by the way, not known who slew the historical Hotspur...
...Still, Coe's epilogue is affecting, with Hal all alone, facing front. He plants his sword firmly in the ground, makes the sign of the cross, picks up his weapon, and determinedly and sedately walks off upstage--a man who-unlike his father, has learned from intentionally mixing with all strata of society and is well along in the process of equipping himself for his destiny as the model hero-king, Henry...
...lesser roles are in general better handled than in Coe's Othello last summer. Eight of the players assume two roles apiece (the practice of doubling was of course standard in Shakespeare's day) Edward Atienza is particularly laudable as a cleanly spoken Worcester, though he overacts the Welsh rebel Glendower (who has parody built into him and does not need any more superimposed). And Karen Stott gives pleasure through Lady Mortimer's prescribed song (with a real on-stage harp accompaniment by Sophie Gilmartin), though her Doll Tearsheet, as I indicated, belongs in the sequent play, which I wish...