#cumberhamlet

[aheartofgold]

I’m so glad that no matter what anyone thinks, everyone agrees that the nutcracker scene in Hamlet was truly the best part of the show

[aheartofgold]

Anyone at the barbican tonight just send me an ask and we'll have to meet up!!! We're already here so come say hi

[zitsandwrinkles]

British Dilemma

A week ago, I had the opportunity to buy myself an excellent seat to the first preview of Hamlet at the Barbican, which is tonight, starring the Internet’s Boyfriend. Of course, I already have tickets to see it twice at later dates, but this first preview? I could go, I thought. I could be there! I could get it under my belt before heading out of town and MAN wouldn’t that be cool to see it like FIRST? And wouldn’t that impress the shit out of America?

But then I checked my calendar, just in case, and lo, at 8pm tonight, The Great British Bake-Off begins. The Great British Bake-Off is the best (regular-season-having) TV show in this damn country. It’s on my calendar. I am not missing Bake-Off.

See you (/more importantly[?] HEAR YOU LIVE) in September, Internet’s Boyfriend. Break a leg!

[stepfordgeek]

If you want to familiarise yourself with Shakespeare and Hamlet before going to see Benedict at the Barbican next year, but you have no idea where to start, let this charming young man help you:

this is Ben Crystal. He's an actor and the son of the famous British linguist David Crystal. As an actor and linguist himself he has a very interesting approach to Shakespeare that I find very accessible.

Shakespeare is not all high culture and complicated. It's all swordfighting and dick jokes as they say. Ben Crystal approaches the plays from the perspective of the performance and shows ways into the text that are far from dry and bland and boring.

The plays are written to be performed and the text includes a lot of information that helped the actors remember the lines or figure out what to emphasise when reciting the lines etc.

Ben's book "Shakespeare on Toast - Getting a Taste for the Bard" is one of my all time favourite books.  It is a great book to get acquainted with the tools Shakespeare handed his actors through the little clues he left in his writing.

Ben Crystal also started writing introductions to various plays called "Springboard Shakespeare" and thankfully he already got around to doing Hamlet (he also did King Lear, A Midsummer Night's Dream and Macbeth). This book has three sections: before, during, after. It is written to give a very quick overview but also some more information if one so wishes.

Because it really has been written as a companion for a live performance rather than reading the play at home and therefore gives short hints that you can read and then continue to enjoy the performance, I find it a very useful book.

Above all Ben Crystal's mission is to show that Shakespeare is great and fun and not scary and inaccessible at all.

[apricotsays]