Mar 25
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Ideas for my next staging of Hamlet, Polonius Edition
Every time he enters the scene, a sign lights up asking for applause, sitcom style. Only Polonius is aware of this fact and he seems embarrassed by it.
Everyone sincerely likes Polonius, and even Hamlet's messing with him is clearly more like a kid trying to play with their uncle. He is entirely unaware of this fact and deeply insecure.
King Hamlet and Claudius love to be cast as the same actor, but what about King Hamlet and Polonius? Something something kings change but institutions endure something something constant accusation in the face of the man closest to he whom you murdered?
Polonius is clearly talking the entire time, and those closest to the stage can hear he's actually continuing to pontificate on every topic at hand at all times. His microphone only switches on during his scripted lines. (Only for a large theater)
Total crack option: the architect of disaster. After the closet scene and the ensuing capture of Hamlet, Polonius steps out from where he was stashed and winks at the audience. Later, upon Ophelia's burial, the scene is cleared and Polonius comes and gets her from the grave. Maybe we end up getting Laertes in on this too, but tbh heck that guy. Interscene silent meeting between Polonius and Norway. We see an advisor who's dramatic ironically obviously Polonius handing the king the poison. Polonius is there to receive Fortinbras at the end, and instantly steps back into his role. Bonus points if this is all plainly because of his clear loyalty to King Hamlet.
Every scene, Polonius is messing with and moving behind curtains. Cats love a good box, Polonius loves a good arras. Before the curtain opens, even, he walks onto stage (possibly declaiming one line or another), looks out at the audience and realizes he's out too soon, and conceals himself behind the curtain, shoes clearly sticking out [bonus bonus points if costuming magic means that when the curtain opens, the shoes are still there, but it's Barnardo in them. OR, and this won't be easy to show visually, they're actually Gertie's shoes (with which she followed King Hamlet, like Niobe, all tears).
(Yeah, some of these only work if Polonius has been working with the royal house since before the succession. So what?)
If I were placed in charge of staging Through This Fire Across From Peter Balkan, I would begin Dawn of Revelation at the campfire (obviously) with Balkan in the middle facing the audience and Narrator and Adam on each side. Balkan is clothed in his damaged but not yet tattered captain's outfit, marking him out as one set apart. The bandage on his temple was torn from what in the normal light seemed plain mustard yellow.
As the music begins, the lights lower all around, casting everything into relief by firelight. Only Balkan is illuminated with much anything, and this just in a "look here" way, the no-makeup looking makeup of lighting.
At 0:54, the song turns. Balkan before this is a bit dramatic, but it's a dramatic time. He speaks to the Narrator and Adam. But when he launches into I will turn these stones to bread, he's begun truly to prophesy. His eyes open in new seeing and he looks out toward (at?) the audience. The instrumentation changes, and I'm willing to say it sounds like a ray of light, a divine touch. As we get those first notes at 0:55, the light shifts. A yellow tone cuts through, shining on Balkan and, in reflection, on the others.
The bandage catches the light in a vague suggestion of a halo.
Hunched in the beginning, through exhaustion, through despair, through guilt, the captain straightens in realization when he foresees no one here is gonna die alone!
He stands in ecstatic revelation, his limp absent, his youthful vigor restored, raises a hand, shouts in joy and wonder. The lights go golden and crimson and play across the stage. We enter fantasy. The Narrator and Adam dance across the stage, joyous, possibly with a quickchange to show rebirth, maybe just stripping coats to reveal the white shirts beneath, that they are made pure as snow. By the time Balkan returns to himself enough to speak, they are rapt, kneeling at his feet.
Balkan clearly addresses the audience, casting the lights out over and into it, when he commands the two Look upon them there and know / We will all go when we go. And as he moves into the next exultation, the Narrator and Adam lift him high on their shoulders.
In the musical interlude, shadowy figures, perhaps a whole shadowplay, play out visions. The sailors are driven back but Balkan steps down and, at the fireside, calls up a renewed flame that banishes darkness. Before it, he makes his final proclamation, pointing into the audience last to first and stern to stem. All light concentrates on him in his final ecstasy, Adam and the Narrator vanishing in the darkness.
By the time of his Yeah! amidst the Ahs, something is clearly failing about Balkan. The music stops as he collapse facefirst on the sand, unmoving. The Narrator and, slower, Adam rush in from the sides as the light returns to normal, and we see them returned to themselves, see them the way they really are*.
A final grind of music, and lights down. *Against Pollution reference just because
Mountain Goats girlies will be like "I'm grappling with the inevitability of death and the beautiful ephemerality of a human experience ensconced in the context of a larger, more eternal truth" and you'll look at what they're listening to and it's a 61 word song about a bog body.
If I were in charge of staging Through This Fire Across From Peter Balkan and I only had the album to go off of, no direction or notes from John or whatever, I would make the Narrator a poor swimmer (Fishing Boat: Learning to float/swim/tread water) who in the wreck is clearly doomed. He's just a kid (Fishing Boat: 16 on a fishing boat/Just once before you're grown) and he's going to die and it's all Balkan's fault (Your Glow: You lost your feeling for the waves before we ran aground). Of course storied Captain Peter Balkan is a mighty swimmer. He sees what's happening, and he goes after the kid. Maybe he even abandons the spar he's holding onto or whatever in order to reverse Titanic the lad to it.
And in the process, in saving the Narrator, that's when he gets bashed in the head by debris. That's the source of his injury. Peter Balkan, in saving a child from the doom he wrought, sows his own destruction and, thereby, his apotheosis.
Working on my Hamlet-from-Horatio's PoV visual novel...
And it's honestly a shame that some of my labels will never see the light of day.
Tony Awards 2017
TWO presidents showed up, and neither was the antichrist
BOTH Bidens came, and Dr. Jill made me cry.
Ben Platt and the pie
Bette Midler is not subject to mortal restrictions and I love her.
Patti LuPone??? Didn’t??? Get a Tony for living dramatically??? In everyday??? Life????
Luke Skywalker showed up for us because Gay Jedi Grandpa is here for us all in this trying time.
Ben Platt will fight you.
Lin’s rainbow ribbon tho
Great Comet was kinda really awesome?
But also I wanna go to Newfoundland.
Not Saigon tho. Looks great as a play, but it is not promoting tourism
Ben Platt has feelings.
Patti LuPone sang twice, and that is NOT ENOUGH.
Josh Gad may be the greatest liar of any geneation.
Okay but Pasek and Paul are really cute?
Ben Platt hiding from Bill
A coup.