This
is a revised version of a piece written for artsHub.
When I was twelve,
my parents took me to see The Complete Works of
William Shakespeare (Abridged), and even though I didn’t get all the
jokes and references, I fell in love with the craziness, the silliness, and the
sheer fun that the show revelled in and celebrated. To this day, I still
maintain that your first serious exposure to Shakespeare (sometimes as a child)
is how you see him and his work throughout life. Over the past number of years,
there have been various productions which have come close to embracing the same
sort of silliness and irreverence which the Reduced Shakespeare Company ushered
in, and it is always a delight to revel in each production’s new take on the
Bard.
While the rest of
the world tries to out-do each other in the Most Reverent Homage To
Shakespeare’s Legacy award to celebrate Shakespeare’s 400th death-day, The Listies – along with
their friends at Sydney Theatre
Company – have mounted a production entitled Hamlet:
Prince of Skidmark no less, which somehow manages to embrace
Shakespeare’s play (and all its variants) and the kind of mindset often found
in children aged five to ten, and pulls it off with enough fart jokes and
theatrical magic (as well as a healthy dose of chaos) to make you feel like a
kid again.
