Reply #8: He's got a narrow range of roles [View All]

Hamlet is one of my favourite plays, expecially after a performance I saw at Stratford, Ontario.

The scene before the banquet was done pretty much on a bare stage. The end of the scene has a fight in it and during the fight, the lone actor with a torch dropped it, plunging the theater into darkness. The crashing and banging from the fight continued for a moment in the darkness.

When the lights came up, about 10 seconds later (yes, I know how to count seconds, I'm a musician), there was a complete banquet set up with three long tables, food, drink, chairs for about 30 people.

That's impossible. It's a thrust stage. There's no curtain. There is a trap door but it barely fits one person. I still have no idea how they did it.

Nobody played Banquo's ghost. When his lines came, a red spotlight would illuminate and there somehow was a disembodied head saying his lines and as soon as the spotlight went out, there was nobody there. No, it wasn't holograms - they weren't commercially available then.

But I was most impressed with the acting. Hamlet had a huge range of emotion.

I don't see Jude Law carrying the part.