After having traveled down from the high country yesterday, I started this week in Boulder with a lunch with my friend Kate down in Denver, and it gave me a chance to drop by the old neighborhood. It all looks lush and green, and the old house is looking good.
In the evening, I got down to business with my first play of this year’s Colorado Shakespeare Festival, a version of Hamlet with several of the roles switched from male to female. While always skeptical if they do these kinds of switches as a gimmick, this for the most part worked, and having a woman do the big Hamlet speeches actually seemed to open up some new perspectives. It didn’t hurt that the actress playing Hamlet did a great job, as did most of the rest of the cast — particularly the actor playing Polonius, Rodney Lizcano, who’s been with CoSF in several of the last seasons. Another noteworthy aspect was the fighting in the sword fight scene at the end, which we very realistic and non-stage-like. The only think I didn’t quite like was that they tried to put some silly humor into some of the performances, particularly Rosencrantz and Guildenstern (who were kind of like Laurel and Hardy), but I guess it was a way to show the madness flying from super dramatic to trying to be humorous. Or perhaps, it was a link to a play I’m seeing later this week, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead with the same actors, which is more comical. All in all the production was very enjoyable. This was a less abridged version than I saw just a few weeks ago, but 3 hours flew by. I’m looking forward to the rest of the week.
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