Just a Few Things…

Last Thursday night, I attended the Commonwealth Shakespeare Company’s production of Hamlet on Boston Common, free to the public. I can claim to know Hamlet pretty well: I’ve read the play twice, seen Olivier’s Hamlet and the Ethan Hawke version done a few years ago, and have now attended three stage productions. On top of that, I have an audio recording of the play starring Sir John Gielgud as Hamlet which I have listened to no fewer than ten times (impossible to get tired of). With all this in mind, I have to state this was by far the best interpretation of Hamlet I’ve ever witnessed, a magnificently-realized production, ultra-professional on every level. Stagecraft at its finest, and all for free. Of particular note, the director took a few liberties with the script that, well, made me laugh; a good example was the scene when Polonius (the king’s counselor and Hamlet’s girlfriend’s dad) attempts to sound Hamlet out in order to get to the bottom of the prince’s strange actions. The director has Hamlet poolside in a bathing suit with water wings and an air mattress!

Here’s how the scene was supposed to go:

LORD POLONIUS

What is the matter, my lord?

HAMLET

Between who?

LORD POLONIUS

I mean, the matter that you read, my lord.

HAMLET

Slanders, sir: for the satirical rogue says here
that old men have grey beards, that their faces are
wrinkled, their eyes purging thick amber and
plum-tree gum and that they have a plentiful lack of
wit, together with most weak hams: all which, sir,
though I most powerfully and potently believe, yet
I hold it not honesty to have it thus set down, for
yourself, sir, should be old as I am, if like a crab
you could go backward.

You see, Hamlet is supposed to hold a book in that scene while saying those equivocal lines. And as I watched, I wondered, How the hell are they going to work a book into this? I didn’t see a book anywhere. But instead, when the moment came, Hamlet squints at the air mattress and starts reading, “Not a life-saving flotation device…” directly from the warning label! It was really funny and it worked. Another nice little touch was in another scene when Polonius does an aside to the audience. Hamlet steps next to him and starts to curiously look around, as if trying to figure out who Polonius is talking to.

But here was the part I liked the best. Right before the play started, the director stepped out to inform the audience that the actress playing Gertrude, Hamlet’s mother, was called away at the last moment due to a family emergency. Her understudy would have to play the role, but he wished for us all to know beforehand that she would need to carry the script around with her. I quickly scanned Gertrude’s part in my mind and decided it was a fairly major role, especially considering the big scene between she and Hamlet in her bedroom, when Hamlet mistakenly slays Polonius and the ghost of his father, the dead King Hamlet (on stilts!), reappears. Bummer, I thought. What rotten luck.

It turned out to be an extra treat, because we all got to witness a true professional step in and do an extraordinary job. They put her script in a plain, black, hardcover book. During the course of the play, she naturally kept it with her at all times and referred to it frequently, but what a performance! It was like being summoned to pitch in bottom of the ninth, based loaded, nobody out, game on the line, and striking out the side. The play didn’t miss a beat with her there. I was very, very impressed.

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Anybody doing the extra credit assignment, good work! Let me know what book you’re reading. And, for the curious, I’d like to share with you what made me think of giving you this “assignment.”

Last Thursday (the same day of the play), I went to the library expecting to hunt up a specific author to see what other books he’s written and checking one out. While walking down the line of fiction shelves, I on impulse changed gears and decided to do something I do all too infrequently: give an author I never heard of a try. I think doing this every so often helps keep me from becoming a “book snob.” Maybe you know what I mean by that — the sort of person who will only read authors he’s familiar with or those recommended to him by persons of respect. The problem with this way of selecting reading matter is, for every one “approved” book, there’s hundreds of other worthies that will never have a chance to be experienced.

When I was a little boy, the bookmobile used to come to my neighborhood once a week during the summer for kids on recess. For anyone not knowing what that is, the bookmobile was a sort of literary ice cream truck, a rolling library where, with a library card, one could withdraw any book or books of his liking. (Maybe they don’t have them anymore. If anybody’s used a bookmobile, let me know.) Now at that age I was fairly open to anything, so I would spend a half hour or so looking at the books and deciding which ones seemed the most interesting. It was like inspecting a basketful of puppies and asking which of the little fellahs wanted to come home with you the most. My mother had cautioned me “never to judge a book by its cover,” so I knew to glance inside and read enough to get the gist of it. It was a wonderful way to discover a book and it stuns me to realize that I don’t try this approach more often. Last year I encountered an absorbing historical novel that took place during the California Gold Rush by using this method. I wound up doing extra research about the Gold Rush on the Internet because of it. Another time I checked out a book that described a fictional English country town of roughly one hundred years ago called Lark Rise. It was charming.

The book I found last Thursday, by the way, is entitled Strange Fruit. It’s written by Lillian Smith, whom I have never heard of. The title attracted me because it matches the name of a Billie Holiday song about a lynching. And, to crown it all, the book’s cover says it’s “the once-banned, and best-selling, novel about an illicit love affair and race relations in 1920s Georgia.” It was even banned in Boston — a publicist’s dream! — so how could I not read it?

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Pop Quiz: if you were marooned on a desert island with a CD player, a lifetime’s supply of batteries and only one CD, what would that CD be? Now, I know the answer is supposed to be Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony or Thelonious Monk or something like that, but I would go with the soundtrack album of Run Lola Run. I could listen to it forever. What’s yours?