Word: skinheads
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...Skinhead Hamlet...
...Skinhead Hamlet is precisely what it sounds like: a telling of the classic tale transported into the idiom of British skinhead punk rockers of the late 1970s. The play opens with Hamlet (Dean Norris) spray painting the misspelled setting--"DENMAK"--on the wall. This Hamlet spends his time fighting, swilling beer and watching television, so, apropos of his offspring's habits, the Ghost (John Bottoms) grabs his attention by pre-empting an episode of Wheel of Fortune...
Scrupulously following the action of Shakespeare's play, The Skinhead Hamlet nonetheless observes the aesthetic standards of its modern setting. Going far beyond the Bard's request for "brevity," playwright Richard Curtis has provided the most laconic dialogue in memory. Hamlet's famous--and, in a bad production, interminable--soliloquy is reduced here to eight words. In the economical vocabulary of Curtis' leather-clad characters, a particular unprintable word suggesting the sexual act makes up half the dialogue, to hilarious result...
...have a heck of a good time along the way. Especially notable are David Schrag's portrayal of Hugo, the snide and arrogant eldest son; Bill Salloway as the confused but moral police inspector who tries to sort out the Charles family; and Donal Logue as the "Buddhist skinhead" and youngest son. Donald Carleton plays the wise-cracking butler, and despite his occasionally stilted delivery he often brings down the house because Idle has given him the best lines...
Closest to the altar room a group of male Hare Krishnas, singing this mantra, were bobbing about in a mild form of skinhead slamdancing, the crowd echoing them with a subdued backup. Cymbals clanged rhythmically, accompanied by the slurping bass boom of the zeppelin-shaped drums which hung from the devotees necks. Hanging on the walls were brightly colored oil paintings of similar goings-on the same drums, haircuts and robes, with the addition of the blue-skinned figure of Krishna...