In a startling reworking of a Shakespearean tragedy, Christ Church performed Hamlet the Musical involving adapted lyrics to dance-floor favourites, Claudius suffering from alcoholism and the usually demure Ophelia rendered a brazen and bold temptress.
After an opening scene of Hamlet’s father shouting, Hamlet the Musical proved an entertaining if irreverent romp where lines extracted from the original play were presented in an entirely new fashion. This was especially so in the case of Rosalind Brody’s Ophelia, where the line ‘Lord Hamlet, with his doublet all unbraced’ became the start of a passionate retelling of an erotic moment to the horror of Tom Perrin’s Polonius. The cast deftly injected modernity into the Shakespearean text and the archaic speech ran as natural from their confident deliveries.
Constance Greenfield shone as Gertrude embodying the society wife from false smile and nit-picking to bleeping BlackBerry. In an inspired moment of physical comedy, Gertrude revealed her anxieties over Hamlet’s temperament to an unconvinced Claudius (Luke Howarth), all with Hamlet (Charles Morton) attempting to slay his uncle. An element of pantomime was sustained with frequent breaking of the fourth wall and self-aware references to Christ Church but even these were mocked in a joke about the ridiculous fallacy of the ‘quiet aside’ in Shakespeare.
Despite no musical showstoppers, snippets of songs kept the atmosphere light-hearted. Kanye West’s classic ‘Gold Digger’ was reworked as ‘Grave Digger’ for Ophelia’s funeral. Here the cast made jibes at Ophelia as ‘Shakespeare’s most over-rated female character’, all accompanied by exaggerated sobs and dabbing at eyes.
Luke Howarth carried an excellent scene alone of explaining the poisoned chalice in a drunken stupor before the final ‘cleansing of the court’ scene allowed the whole tragedy to descend into melodramatic farce. Gertrude advised Hamlet the best place to slay her so as not to fall over the other bodies and Hamlet’s ghost father returned to agree that the best plan would be to kill himself and be done with it. The body-laden stage sprang back to life for a final number, the surprising but nonetheless cheering ‘Always look on the Bright Side of Life’ from Monty Python’s Life of Brian.
Overall, Hamlet the Musical provided an enjoyable half-an-hour of comedy and with costumes essentially pared down to black clothes, the actors allowed their skills in manipulating the language for humour to shine. The iconic scenes of Yorrick’s head and the murders meant the audience could follow the narrative fairly easily and the show had the atmosphere of high-energy theatre threatening but never acquiescing to chaos that means the audience are fully engaged throughout.
