Tragedy! also in five acts

If you remember back a few weeks, I told you about my friends and I enjoying a night spent reading Much Ado About Nothing aloud as a group. Well, last night, we decided to continue the Shakespearean tradition, alternating now to a tragedy - Hamlet.

the group

The set-up was a little more advanced. We still sat in a circle and had our ice cream, but in addition to the various hard copies of the play, the script was projected onto the wall for easier reading. There was also a stage, complete with photo backgrounds projected onto the wall for each scene. Despite the show not being, in it's nature, comedic, there was still riotous laughter through most of the evening. The accents continued being silly, there were costumes and swords, and a lot of impromptu singing. There may be video evidence to share with you at a later date. :)

enter Drew as the leader of the players

I have decided that, were I ever to have a little brother, I would want him to be like Drew's. When I arrived, he came down to let me in the gate, questioned me thoroughly like a good sentry ought, and then marched me up the stairs, my hands on my head and his sword point in my spine. Throughout the evening, he was quite the little server, coming round first with slices of apple, then slices of apple on toothpicks, then slices of cheese on toothpicks, then a bowl for the toothpicks, and then orange juice (at which point we convinced him we were sated). I also hear that he gave a stunning performance as the ghost of Hamlet's father, which I am sad to have missed.

Some star performances of the night were: the ever-true Horatio, surivor till the end, and excellently portrayed by Matt; Ophelia's rapid descent into madness, by Kendra - complete with music in her most excellent voice; Rebekah as a singing, cockney, grave-digging clown of some hilarity, and Ryan as both Hamlet for the epic monologue and later as the 'foppish' Osric.

Rebekah in her shining performance as the 'clown'

For myself, the highlights were performing my small segments as Horatio in German, actually being able to follow the German translation all the way through, and getting a very dramatic, gargling death scene on the couch as Queen Gertrude. Reading Shakespeare not in English is different, as it's interesting to see what of the humor translates and what is simply impossible. The content remains the same, whether the translation is literal or slightly altered, but some of the wordplay is necessarily lacking. My favorite was when two lines were left out, with the following explanation: "Here, two of Hamlet's joking lines have been left out, the first because the translator did not understand it, the other because it is an ambiguous obscenity." (Hier hat man zwey Scherz-Reden Hamlets weglassen müssen, wovon die erste dem Übersezer unverständlich, und die andre ein zweydeutige Zote ist.) I laughed.

my iPad sure does come in all kinds of handy :) (Ryan as Hamlet, me as Horatio)