Oh. Forgot.

One of the things that sticks with me most about Hamlet? The costuming choices. Hamlet first appears in a black suit, with his hair slicked back. Quiet, reserved, unsure what to do with himself. As he encounters his father's tortured ghost, his jacket comes off, his shirt untucked. Next, we see him in jeans and a t-shirt-- an old t-shirt, red, with an abstract print of really cut abs on it, as if an outward show of his outward show. And bare feet. He spends much of the play in bare feet. Even in the play-within-a-play scene, with everyone in formal dress, and Hamlet himself in a tux, his feet are bare, like River wandering Serenity in her Ophelia-like madness. We don't see him in shoes again until he's returning from England, his purpose and resolve regained.

Gertrude's gowns were masterfully simple sheaths of silk, gathered into an enormous train between her shoulderblades. When she sat to watch the play, her gown cascaded in shocking blood red down the steps of the dais.

The Dumbshow Poisoner was lowered to the Dumbshow King on wires wearing only black boxer briefs with a huge, spangled, red, heart-shaped codpiece. When the Dumbshow Queen rejects his advances, he drops the front of the codpiece, unfurling an enormous slinky attached to a smaller red heart over his crotch. He, David Ajala, was one of the cast members I met briefly after the show, and I told him how much I'd loved it. I was even happier I'd mentioned it when he told me the slinky had been his idea.

I am a bad girl: watching Hamlet, somewhere around 2.2, fall on the floor in a writhing ecstasy of grief, my eyes widened as his shirt came up, exposing a very pale, very flat stomach, with just a light trail. I sternly, but amusedly, turned my mind firmly back to the text. It was also, amusingly, around the same point at which Hamlet turns to the audience and demands to know who calls him coward. Definitely not what I'd've called him. Also, in that same scene, he says, "I have heard/That guilty creatures sitting at a play...." Here he paused, pointing out into the stalls. Giggling ensued all around.

There were several scenes played for laughs, which surprised me. When Hamlet is brought before the King for killing Polonius, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern wheel him in, black-gaffer-taped to an office chair, looking slightly put out by the whole thing. The King, of course, takes the opportunity to rip the tape off Hamlet's mouth rather than carefully remove it. "Ow! Ow! OW!" And the scene is made yet more bizarre by the humour emphasised in it: when the King sternly demands, "Where is Polonius?", as no one can find the body, Hamlet bellows back, "In heaven!" Patrick Stewart paused here, his mouth twitching, and walked in a slow circle before continuing his next line. The audience laughed. (Inevitable geek moment? "The Christmas Invasion." Sycorax: "I demand to know who you are!" Doctor, bellowing exaggeratedly, "I don't know!" It was just like that.) Also, when Hamlet finally relents and reveals where the body lies, the exchange as a whole was blackly humorous.

King: Where is Polonius?

Hamlet: In heaven, send thither to see. If your messenger find him not there, seek him i'th'other place yourself. But indeed, if you find him not this month (here was inserted a pregnant pause), you shall nose him as you go up the stairs into the lobby.

King (To Rosencrantz and attendants): Go seek him there.

(The attendants race out of the room.)

Hamlet (Drily): He will stay till ye come.



More things come to me as I think of them. As I usually am with art that affects me, I'm still churning and processing. There will be more writing.