Hamlet
A couple of weeks ago, we all watched the excellent Royal Shakespeare Company Hamlet that aired locally on PBS (some while before). You know: David Tennant (as Hamlet), Patrick Stewart (as Claudius). No production is ever flawless, and this was no exception: though I felt the CCTV gimmick worked surprisingly well to provide a constant haunting sense of being observed, Hamlet’s own use of a camcorder seemed a bit much.
But the production was uniformly gripping and absorbing; I found myself chewing over aspects of both the play and its performance for days.
Not surprisingly, both Clara and Timothy were transfixed. We paused a number of times to explain details (or to look them up in the (Jenkins) Arden edition), of course, but by and large the video was wholly comprehensible and entertaining for both of them.
On its own, this was a great experience, and I’d planned to write here about it anyway, but over the last two nights, we watched the 1990 film version of Tom Stoppard’s
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are dead
with Richard Dreyfuss (as chief player) and Tim Roth & Gary Oldman (as the title characters, either respectively or not). Karen and I had seen the stage play once or twice – but never Stoppard’s film.
We both like Stoppard, but even so were unprepared for the brilliance of this film. The kids, I think, were particularly captivated by some of the dialogue hooks linking the show to Hamlet, as well as Stoppard’s absurdity (especially some of the logic puzzles) and Roth & Oldman’s bumbling, of course.
The bumbling and some of the facial expressions and mannerisms (especially Oldman’s) seemed such an homage to Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy that I just now googled to see whether anyone else had already seen the connection. Oldman himself had, of course; Glenn Collins quotes him in “Oldman onscreen: The psychopath in perfect accent” in the New York Times (1 October, 1990):
I play this buffoonish Stan Laurel to Tim Roth’s Oliver Hardy.
And in a 2003 Amazon customer review of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are dead, Mark Steyn writes:
Gary Oldman and Tim Roth make a great pairing, with Oldman expressing a rarely seen gift for comedy – his performance here is almost reminiscent of Stan Laurel.
So that answers that question!
Anyway, a most excellent time was had by all, and I’m ever so grateful (and almost amazed) that I’m part of a family that enjoys such fare.
