O what rogues and peasant slaves are you!

[amanuensis1]

How is it that every single soul and community on my flist failed to inform me that the U.S. broadcast of David Tennant's Hamlet was on PBS Wednesday night? You are all fi--

...oh, wait, it's repeating again late tonight. Carry on!

Comments

[ll24ever.livejournal.com]

Patrick Stewart was fabulous, however whoever they had playing Hamlet (didn't recognize his face or his name) was VERY distracting and made it nearly impossible to get into the flow of the play.

[amanuensis1.livejournal.com]

I actually liked him a great deal. David Tennant's manic performance was a fascinating take on Hamlet's grief and madness, I thought.

[ll24ever.livejournal.com]

It did work for the character, however the overall modern feel of the performance sort of distracted me from the story. I guess I'm an old fashioned fan of the bard. The only modernized version of a play that I truly enjoy as much as the old fashioned one was Baz Lurman (sp?)'s movie version of Romeo and Juliet (but then again I am in lust with Leonardo DiCaprio and that was one of his best movie performances).

Did you notice that Ophelia doesn't really have much of a character until she goes mad? I was trying to figure her out during the early parts of the play both times I watched it and she just wasn't doing anything for me until after she went crazy..then she was riveting to watch.

[amanuensis1.livejournal.com]

What you said about Ophelia--god, yes. That was exactly my reaction!

[ll24ever.livejournal.com]

That's all that anyone remembers Ophelia for anyway. My drama teacher asked us about her while we were studying Hamlet and all we could say about her character was that she went crazy, handed out weeds as flowers and then drowned herself in a mad delusion. But we all agreed that she was the most interesting mad character in the whole play. Hamlet was mad as well, but his madness wasn't nearly as interesting (up until he jumped into Ophelia's grave and picked up her dead body anyway, especially since that was just after he had carried on a conversation with poor Yorick's (sp?) skull).