Word: hamlet
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...their sybarite lifestyle - is now a down-at-the-heel city 500 km southwest of Delhi. But it retains one royal passion: food. India's finest lamb dishes derive from Awadhi cuisine, the ultimate expression of which is the delicate Kakori kebab, a cigar-shaped delight produced in a hamlet of that name half an hour's drive from Lucknow. Local legend says it was created for a toothless prince, and it's easy to see why. Made from finely ground mutton, infused with cloves, cinnamon and other spices, the Kakori is so soft it just melts on your tongue...
...Political times make everything political. So when Trevor Nunn unveiled his modern-dress production of ?Hamlet? this spring, a few picked at Nunn?s presumed avoidance of a political context. ?Hamlet is a political play rife with plotting, intrigue and spying,? Sue Jones wrote in the Socialist Review. ?There is something rotten in Shakespeare?s Denmark, and we see Norway waiting in the wings to invade the state, which is collapsing through the weight of its own corruption. At one point Hamlet speaks of his distress at the ease with which thousands of soldiers are sent to their deaths...
...That seems a bit blinkered, since Nunn has Claudius (Tom Mannion) announce his marriage to Gertrude (Imogen Stubbs) at a political rally. And, really, who needs the text, or a new production, to see ?Hamlet? as a mirror of modern politics? Long before the war, commentators noted how Bush felt obliged to revenge the bungled attempt on his Presidential father?s life by Saddam Hussein?s agents. Anyone who uses a 21st century glass to refract Denmark in the 12th century as seen by Shakespeare at the beginning of the 17th can easily find political analogies...
...this one: George W. Bush (Claudius) killed the spirit of liberal America (Hamlet?s father) and usurped the U.S. in a stolen election (seized the throne); now John Kerry (Hamlet) has to decide whether to fight Bush with the gloves off or to play by the rules and, perhaps, lose the soul of the kingdom. Or Hamlet?s father is the conscience of Britain?s Labour Party, dismayed that Bush (Claudius) has seduced and dazzled Tony Blair (Gertrude); and, I guess, Hamlet is Iraq, not sure how it should act under the new occupation. Or Hamlet?s father is George...
...Other than the political quibbles, London critics were mostly rapturous about this modern-dress revival. ?Go and see Trevor Nunn?s ?Hamlet?,? one wrote. ?In forty years? time you will be able to tell the grandchildren that you saw Ben Whishaw?s first great role.? In black garb, with a thin white face, his crimson lips the only color in his array, Whishaw does attract attention. He gets vamped by every woman from his flirtatious mom to Ophelia (Samantha Whittaker), dressed in schoolgirl plaids and played as a sexually precocious teeny-bopper who needs Hamlet as much as he needs...