BY: Molly Gray
Last week, I had the privilege of going to Alabama Shakespeare Festival in Montgomery to see Shakespeare’s Hamlet. Here are my thoughts about the production.
If you have ever seen Hamlet, you know that there are multiple characters and locations to tell the story. There are three acts. The play lasted two hours and 45 minutes with two intermissions. For some people, this would have been too long. However, I thought that it was just enough time to really get a good idea of the plot.
The play was put on by Bedlam Theatre. They are known for performing Hamlet with four actors. With the multiple characters in Hamlet, it was very impressive that these actors could remember all of the lines for the different characters they had to portray. The actor who played Hamlet was the only one who did not have multiple characters to play, because his part is the most important. The other three actors each played at least two characters, if not more than that. It was great to see the actors truly get into each character that they were portraying. They added just what each character needed to be great.
One criticism I have about the four actors playing multiple characters is that it was easy to get confused. I have studied Hamlet multiple times, so I was able to keep up. However, I overheard people saying that they were confused when the actors changed characters in the middle of the scene. This happened many times throughout the play. Though the actors added little props and started acting like their new character, it could take a moment to understand who was playing who at the time.
During each intermission, the actors changed the scenery. It was very minimal, so there was not a lot of confusion about where we were in the play or what was happening. The audience also did not have to be distracted by the scenery.
Overall, I really enjoyed the play and would recommend it to anyone who is interested.