Word: nunn
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...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...
...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...
...lovely thing about London theater is that there?s so blooming much of it; a frustrating thing is that many plays bloom briefly, then fade after a limited engagement. Some shows run for ages that shouldn?t: the stodgy ?Blood Brothers? has run for 16 years; and Nunn?s rendition of the Cole Porter musical ?Anything Goes,? which moved successfully from the National to the Theatre Royal Drury Lane, looked simultaneously stiff and frantic when I caught it. All right, the good die young. Here are notes on a few plays you can?t see, and I?ll have trouble...
According to Perry, Russia has not fully complied with Nunn-Lugar, “especially in the areas of biological and chemical weapons...