Word: hamlet
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...West Hollywood Ralphs branch besides deliberation in the brownie-mix aisle over Ghirardelli's, Hershey's and Duncan Hines'. And a good deal of time spent choosing steaks. And quite a few minutes debating the merits of ginger-ale brands. And waffle mixes. And protein bars. DiCaprio is the Hamlet of Ralphs...
...characters in his plays exist only while they are on the stage or the page. The rest, as far as they and we are concerned, is silence. Thus the eminent scholars and critics who once busied themselves in disputations about the number of Lady Macbeth's children or Hamlet's course of study at Wittenberg were actually engaged in nothing more than romantic woolgathering. But the urge to think of Shakespeare's people as real dies hard, and woolgathering has its charms, as John Updike wittily demonstrates anew in Gertrude and Claudius (Knopf; 212 pages; $23). This novel ends where...
Updike's enterprise is not as fanciful as it might at first seem. He has consulted the same sources Shakespeare apparently used for his play but shapes this material to different purposes. Here the moody prince makes only a walk-on appearance. Updike's spotlight falls instead on Hamlet's mother Queen Gertrude and her adulterous affair with Claudius, her husband's younger brother. The topic of illicit sex will sound familiar to Updike's readers, but the archaic Scandinavian setting and the regal gravitas of the characters involved make this old story fresh and moving...
...when the brightest star of postmodern dance has an opening, but this premiere at the New York City Ballet fails to catch fire. Tharp's twitchy, fidgety signature moves are swamped by Beethoven's overwhelming dance rhythms. Making a ballet to the Seventh Symphony, it seems, is like turning Hamlet into an opera: good enough just isn't good enough...
...parts Ancient Rome and post-medieval Europe. So even though she allows monumental flights of historical fancy, Taymor is able to successfully preserve a greater portion of the original text than has been used in any recent film adaptation of Shakespeare with the exception of Kenneth Branagh's 1996 Hamlet...