Word: hamlets
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...that splendid classical actor Brian Bedford. Bedford delivered his lines rapidly, as was done in Shakespeare's day, so that the running-time was only three hours and a half. He acted, as Shaw advocated, on the lines, rather than between the lines, as the most famous American Hamlet, John Barrymore, was wont to do. (Uncut productions are exceedingly rare. In Britain, Frank Benson did it first, in 1899. Gielgud and Guinness acted the full text in the decade before World War II. New York first saw an uncut Hamlet in 1938, with the much overrated Maurice Evans...
...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...
...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...
...program note, Coe makes the odd statement that "Hamlet avoids succession to the throne by willing his own death throughout the play because he considers he has nothing to lose by it." Hamlet is, in fact, so chameleonic that there isn't anything he does throughout the play. But Walken's Hamlet lacks range, there is little in it except harshness and choler. It needs infusions of sensitivity, intellectuality wit, irony, and especially music (of which Hamlet claims to be a master...
...Hamlet's frequent "O God" comes out "O Gahd," and the dramatist's "O Wonderful" has been turned into a Wittenbergian "Wunderbar," and "inexplicable" is mispronounced. On holding Yorick's skull, Hamlet comments, "I knew him, Horatio, a fellow of infinite jest. "But Walken says, "I knew him, [Long pause] Horatio a fellow of infinite jest." When we reach the Prince's dying words, Walken is so heedless of meter that the beautiful line. "Absent thee from felicity awhile" emerges with an accent on the first syllable...