"The mistake that people make when playing Hamlet," actor Maurice
Stevedore
notes, "is overdoing the melancholia. ' The Melancholy Dane'.
The Melancholy Dane my ass! Honestly, who wants
to watch somebody bluster
and pout for three straight hours? Nobody. Nobody in Elizabethan England,
and
nobody in 21st Century New York City. Hamlet should be a card. A cut-up.
A hoot. I want to see Hamlet roar with
laughter as he consigns Rosencranzt and
Guilderstern to their deaths. I want to see him double over with laughter
as
he duels Laertes. I want to see him laughing so hard as he delivers the line
'Absent thee from felicity a
while' that the audence can hardly hear it. If Hamlet
isn't hilarious," Stevedore concludes, "then Hamlet
isn't Hamlet."
