Word: norton
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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...
...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...
...beautifully. It looks as if the Hyperion's experiment was successful: they brought one of the most difficult and rewarding plays in history to a large student audience, and they succeeded in demonstrating that Sanders really is (except for those darn acoustics) suitable for Shakespeare. If the production, as Norton wrote of the actor who played Hamlet in '56 (the amusingly named Colgate Salsbury '57), had certain marked defects, it also "manage[d] to do certain difficult things remarkably well." Like staging Hamlet in Sanders, for the masses, in the first place--and succeeding...
Mike (Matt Damon) is a gifted, honorable, high-stakes poker player trying to leave the game so he can finish law school. Worm (Edward Norton) is a gifted, dishonorable player given to dealing from the bottom of the deck. The mystery of Rounders is why a smart guy risks repute, not to mention life and limb, to help a dumb and self-destructive one. Still, if Rounders lacks the sardonically twisted plots and people of Dahl's best work (Red Rock West, The Last Seduction), it is, like them, well acted and atmospherically arresting. The director fails to fill this...