Word: hamlet
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Legendary Boston theater critic Elliot Norton, writing in the Boston Daily Record about the Harvard Dramatic Club's December 1956 performance of Hamlet in Sanders Theatre, began his remarks by saying: "Although this Hamlet is not perfect...it is intelligently conceived and acted; In it the student players continually pass the bounds of usual undergraduate performances." It would certainly be too facile to say that history repeats itself, but Norton's words are, by happy chance, applicable to last weekend's appearance of Hamlet in Sanders, much-hyped as the first production of the play there since...
...Hyperion Theatre Company--the undergraduate Shakespeare group under whose general auspices this production fell--has been pointing proudly to the historical significance of enacting Hamlet in Sanders given the stage's Elizabethan proportions and structure. (You can take a look at playbills and clippings from the last century onward--including Norton's review--in the history of Hamlet in Sanders display that's been set up in the buildings main hall; take a look before they clear it away.) Visually speaking, they're right: Sanders turns out to be a pretty impressive place to do Shakespeare. All that dark wood...
...would be somewhat unfair to echo Norton in saying that the Hyperion actors "continually pass[ed] the bounds of usual undergraduate performances." They did, however present more polish than the usual undergraduate Shakespeare shows. Brett Egan '99, as Hamlet, was handed the monumental task of carrying the weight of the show upon his shoulders; while it would take more space than is given to an entire review to dissect an actor's performance of a Hamlet, it can be said that Egan did a generally fine job with the role, making his Hamlet sympathetic enough to carry our sympathy...
...hints of temper, but later resorted to indicating the kings conflicting and repressed emotions by playing the role with physical stiffness on the one hand, and bellowing anger on the other. Christine Nyereyegona '00 was a regal Gertrude, if rather lacking in subtlety in her bedroom confrontation scene with Hamlet, and Jesse Hawkes '99 was an unobtrusive and shamefully underexploited Horatio. The luminous Ophelia, of Jessica Kaye '00, too, began winningly enough, but she overplayed her madness scenes just slightly. By far the most effective of the supporting cast, Jim Augustine '01 made a hilariously funny, if somewhat unexpectedly young...
...This Hamlet was still remarkably powerful and provocative: to have staged Hamlet competently in the first place is a strong accomplishment in itself, one that a great many companies couldn't have managed. Moreover, the production was excellent when it came to spectacle--a dazzling and chilling set of scenes at the play's center revolved around the play-within-a-play, featuring masks, musicians and a tremendous rendition of "Hecuba" monologue by Player King Dan Berwick '01--and the sword-fight at the end was all it had been cracked up to be. Spectacle, in Hamlet...