Review – Hamlet (2000)

Okay, I admit it. I don’t like this play. Maybe it’s because I’ve been told so many times that it’s the greatest work in the English language that I can’t help but be critical of its stature. Maybe it’s because the protagonist strikes me as an indecisive, neurotic jerk rather than a tortured soul. Maybe I’m just too cynical. In any event, I don’t come into any production of the play with the idea that I’m going to like it or that it will be in any way ruined by an attempt to do something new and original with it. But people please. “The soliloquy” delivered as a voice-over as the star wanders aimlessly up and down the “action” aisle of Blockbuster Video. Father’s ghost – dressed like an Italian pimp – suddenly popping up on the balcony of sonny’s mid-town condo. The “nunnery” speech delivered in part via answering machine a la “Psycho Ex-Girlfriend.” The King’s conscience captured by a wretched film-school-esque video. And don’t even get me started about what they did to the sword fight at the end. This is the worst thing that’s happened to the melancholy Dane since Gilligan’s Island. Gen-X mega-star Ethan Hawke takes the lead, heading an ensemble of actors who have almost all done better work elsewhere. By the time the MTV editing, random dialogue re-arranging, and other empty-headed nonsense is stirred in, this plays out like “The Real World: Denmark.” It left me wondering if Hamlet was dithering over killing Claudius or merely trying to get him kicked out of the house. Wretched. See if desperate