Word: ophelia
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...lead to an unprofessional exchange of blows. Lines like "What a f---ing idiot!" are to be uttered offstage, after the close of business, so to speak - in the way that Hamlet, stopping at a bar for a drink after the play, might confide to a friend that Ophelia has bad breath. The words are for private consumption. They must not be part of the performance...
...Venora), which understandably angers her son, Hamlet (Ethan Hawke). Torn between concerns for his mother and spurred by a visit from his father's ghost, our protagonist seeks to uncover the truth of his father's death by feigning madness. Couple Hamlet's anxiety to a tortuous romance with Ophelia (Julia Stiles) and meddling from her father (Bill Murray), and the plot unfolds from there. Or rather implodes, because Hamlet's acted lunacy causes the downfall of his carefully crafted yuppie world...
...Where Hamlet should be plaintive and forthright, he seems surly and bratty, and where the part calls for tortuous introspection, Hawke settles into a lifeless, gravelly monotone. For the most part, Hawke doesn't seem to know the implications of what he's saying. Accordingly, little chemistry develops with Ophelia because Stiles spends much of her screen time pouting and skulking. The only discernable reason that the two are a match for one another is because they are equally petulant. Hamlet does not represent "the courtier's, soldier's, scholar's, eye," just a spoiled latch-key kid whose parents...
...characteristic self-berating monologue, Hawke scrutinizes James Dean in Rebel Without a Cause, asking, "What would he do?"-something which nicely crystallizes Hamlet's vacillation. Hamlet screaming at Gertrude to "Leave wringing of your hands" as she dives for a telephone, and placing a recording wire on Ophelia so Polonius can eavesdrop on her conversation with Hamlet are all commendable directorial choices, but the work becomes spoiled with major misinterpretation. As the play was origianlly written, Hamlet chooses not to kill Claudius in act III, scene iii, because he discovers Claudius praying and repenting in the chapel...
...Diane had also played Hamlet in her twenties, and also played Ophelia with Kevin Klein onstage, so she knew the play better than anyone. EH: She was a great resource, in three different capacities. She was Clare Danes' mother in _Romeo + Juliet...