AM+hamlet

**Positives**
1. The black & white costumes that the Players wore were very exquisite and beautiful and I was impressed by their grandeur. They made the players stand out and caused them to look more dramatic, allowing me to appreciate their humor and goofy emotions.

2. The one-minute Hamlet in the beginning of the show was a fantastic idea from the director, Ray Paolino. I have never read the play and am frankly not very familiar with it at all, so whenever I didn’t understand the Shakespearian language, it was good to be able to have a plot summary in the forefront of my mind.

3. The lighting was constantly changing and dynamic. Recall from my last review that while watching //Aunt Dan and Lemon//, my attention was lost due to lack of light expression. My experience with this production of //Hamlet// was very different. Spotlights were used during soliloquies, green lights accompanied the ghost’s presence, and shaky flashlights spotted to emphasize speeches. All of these light creations worked together in producing a very appealing show.

4. Entrances and exits were interesting because the actors didn’t merely just walk to stage left or right and offstage. They went down off of the stage and used doors on either side of the audience or farther back in the theater. It made the play more realistic – actors weren’t simply just walking off the stage. They were actually leaving where they had previously been. Also, the exit when the ghost was supposed to disappear was thoughtful. He descended hidden stairs in the middle of the stage, appearing to the audience to fascinatingly “sink into the ground.”

5. In Scene 1 of Act 2, Ophelia described how she was concerned with Hamlet’s recent behaviors. As she described his peculiarities as of late, Hamlet was brought across the stage. Thus, the audience was able to see firsthand what Ophelia was describing. I thought this was an interesting idea by the director.

Negatives
1. This was the first play I have seen in the Fine Arts Theater. Since I saw the show on a Wednesday night, the theater obviously wasn’t very crowded. Not only was it not crowded, but also there was nobody in my row to the left or right. I felt like I was in a room by myself, and the atmosphere just wasn’t good to watch the play in. I found in previous shows that I really enjoyed feeling immersed in the action of the play in the miniscule cellar theater. The actors are able to see if there is a crowded theater or not, and I think the lack of people in the audience discouraged the actors and caused them to not put on their best performances. I just didn’t feel the passion shining through in some of their acting, which was absolutely necessary for an enjoyable show, since after all, it was Shakespearian language.

2. From my seat in the depths of Row M, some of the lines were hard to hear due to lack of strong voice projection or microphones. Since the language of the play is already difficult to understand, it is necessary that the audience member thinks about every word they hear and works them together to figure out what is meant by the jumble of Shakespearian words. When some of the words are missing because they cannot be heard, it makes the plot much harder to understand, especially when encountering a play for the first time.

3. All that I knew about Hamlet prior to seeing the show was the famous line: “To be, or not to be.” I anxiously awaited this line, until finally, it was delivered. I was very disappointed, however, that a creaking ladder on stage distracted me as the line was spoken. Hamlet was perched at the top of a rolling ladder and being rolled across stage by two stagehands as he gave his soliloquy. The ladder creaked and the stagehands were very visible to me, causing me to lose focus and miss what I had been looking forward to the entire time.

4. I felt that Ophelia, played by Shelli Delgado, didn’t properly fit her character. Ophelia should be dainty, with a slender figure and have long flowing hair. Delgado didn’t posses any of these important qualities, and instead I thought that she looked like a naïve little girl, not mature enough to be going through what she did.

5. Parts of Act 3, Scene 1 didn’t sit well with me. It was the part of the show when Polonius was trying to convince Claudius that the reason for Hamlet’s madness was rooted in his love for Ophelia. Upon setting Hamlet loose on her, Polonius, the father of Ophelia, observed as Hamlet verbally and physically abused his young daughter. I felt that the blocking in this scene should have been different. There are two possibilities for a change in blocking. Either Polonius should have reacted more protectively of his daughter and tried to stop Hamlet, or Hamlet shouldn’t have physically groped and harassed Ophelia. No father would calmly watch as their daughter was hurt, no matter how secretive they were trying to be.