Director’s Note
By: Clark Nicholson, Gamut Theatre Artistic Director
WELCOME BACK TO RESERVOIR PARK! We’re so glad to again gather with you under the open sky to share one of William Shakespeare’s most beloved stories. Because of the pandemic, we missed seeing you last year, and we are very pleased to once again bring you our yearly rite of Summer!
A bit of explanation is in order concerning the form of our production of “Hamlet: Prince of Denmark”. You will notice as you look to the stage that the set is quite a bit more spare than you may have become accustomed to seeing in a Harrisburg Shakespeare Company production. There are several reasons for that. Coming out of quarantine, we knew that our ability to get many people together to construct a highly detailed stage design was just now feasible. Nor was it desirable or possible to cast and rehearse a full-sized ensemble. Even though mask mandates have now largely been lifted, this was not the case when we began production over a month ago.
However, there was a fortuitous situation that presented itself to solve several problems at once. Each year, Harrisburg Shakespeare’s parent organization, Gamut Theatre Group, produces an edited version of a Shakespeare classic. These productions are highly truncated and the casting is doubled and tripled to keep to a manageable size, because this yearly offering is kept in repertory usage to tour to schools and other municipalities. The aesthetic focus is on the essential parts of the story presented, and what remains is the raw dynamic of the play’s construction with an emphasis on Shakespeare's language.
As bad luck would have, when Covid lock-down happened in March of 2020, Gamut had an educational outreach production of Hamlet in its pocket which had only been put onstage twice. We were very sad to have mounted this effort, only to have it be seen by a small handful of Central PA students. However, the need to be responsible far outweighed any regrets we might have about not being able to have a full season of performing this show.
You probably see where I’m going here: earlier in this year, it looked as if we might actually be able to take steps to come out of semi-hibernation, and the first really sizable offering we knew we would make would be the resurrection of our annual offering of a Free Shakespeare production in this lovely park. And so, we knew what we needed to do. We set to work pulling this edited version of Hamlet out of the mothballs and getting it back on its feet. We are so happy that this is what you will see tonight.
I also am glad that we get the opportunity to show you a sample of the work we’ve been bringing into Central PA schools for many years now. Should you wish to have one of these productions come to your school or organization, you need only get in touch with Gamut and we will be happy to set up a tour for you.
A note about this particular production: Although it is a heavy edit (roughly half as long as an uncut version of the play) it still holds the basic storyline and the dynamics of the major players. It is our hope that this doorway into Shakespeare in general and “Hamlet” in particular will spur audience members to seek out a more full production in the future, where-in they will find the speeches, sub-plots, and scenes that were necessarily omitted in this streamlined version of the story.
Also, you will notice that this production, while contemporary in setting, hearkens back in time some 30-40 years to the musical era I call “proto-Goth”. This Hamlet’s fashion and musical taste tend toward those sounds and sights rooted in the work of Joy Division, Gary Numan, late 70s David Bowie, and Kraftwerk. Why? Well, to be totally honest, it’s because that’s a large part of where my head and heart were at when I was Hamlet’s age, and his brooding introspection was something that I understood in that time and empathized with in that context. That’s the Hamlet we bring you tonight: Doc Martens, dark clothes, guy-liner and all. Imagine that a slightly younger Hamlet, before our story begins, discovered his mom’s old mix tapes and subsequently made himself a killer Smiths, Depeche Mode, Cure, Art of Noise Spotify playlist. Then he smoothed in the thick honey of his own bittersweet gloom.
That’s all I have for you. All that needs to be said. I do hope that if you enjoy this and don’t know the uncut versions of this script, you’ll seek out a more full version where-in you’ll meet Francisco, Cornelius, Voltemonde, Roderigo, Osiric, and Fortinbras; where you’ll hear Hamlet’s “O, What a rogue and peasant slave…. “and “Now how all occasions do inform against me….” Speeches, you’ll delight in the ironic rhetorical daggers within the Rosencrantz/Guildenstern/Hamlet scene popularly called “The recorders”, and where you will see Hamlet “Borne like a prince to the stage…” in the very final moments of the play.
So good to be back. Enjoy!
Clark