Hamlet

I wavered for about two weeks. I’m so wishy-washy that I couldn’t make up my mind if I should go see Hamlet or not. Well, I decided, very firmly, to see Hamlet about fifteen minutes before the show started. I mean, the play was at the UIC Theater and I was on campus anyway. Recently, I had watched a movie from Spain on the Internet and a young woman says that she’s an aspiring actress. Then, she starts performing Hamlet’s soliloquoy in Spanish: “Ser o no ser.” That helped me decide to see Hamlet. However, I almost didn’t get in because the show sold out moments after I bought my ticket. I’m really glad I saw the play because it was a very different inerpretation by director Luigi Salerni. (I took a playwriting class with him quite a few years ago while I was still a graduate student and I must admit that he taught me a lot about playwriting.) So in his interpretation of the play, Hamlet kisses Horatio on the lips. I really wasn’t expecting this. When I think of Hamlet, I always think of the movie version with Lawrence Olivier. Of course, the play was updated a little to represent our times, but the dialogue was the original dialogue as Shakespeare wrote it. This combination reminded me of the movie version of Romeo and Juliet with Leonardo DiCaprio, which I happen to love because of this incongruous combination. I love unexpected and unusual juxtapositions. I guess because my whole life is like that.

I’ve seen a few plays before at the UIC Theater and it’s a shame more people don’t know about it. Now that I have more time on my hands, I plan to see many more plays there. Next week, I plan to see Tom Stoppard’s “Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead.” Unless, of course, I change my mind.