Scott Parkinson and Shannon Cochran/ Photo by Michael Brosilow
A body of work as well-tread as the Shakespearean canon has seen it all. From a childish staging of "Macbeth" on a moon bounce at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival to last season's Wall Street-evoking "Timon of Athens" at Chicago Shakespeare Theatre, the Bard's plays have been poked and prodded as though a captive orangutan. Shakespeare's work has seen so many frills and glitter, in fact, that stripped down simplicity - a throwback to the period-be-damned, unit set productions of sixteenth century London - is now looked upon as new and experimental. A single bench? How abstract!
Artistic Director Michael Halberstam's new production of "Hamlet" at Writer's Theatre in Glencoe discovers an exciting medium between the blatantly conceptual and the barebones text-based. Collette Pollard's set is effectively streamlined, but the costumes are comfortably trendy. There is earth-shaking sound design by Mikhail Fiskel, but also the clearest, most honorable treatment of Shakespearean language I've seen and heard on a Chicago-area stage. Though removed of clutter and speaking the same words that have been spoken for centuries, Writers' "Hamlet" feels fresh and rediscovered.
Artistic Director Michael Halberstam's new production of "Hamlet" at Writer's Theatre in Glencoe discovers an exciting medium between the blatantly conceptual and the barebones text-based. Collette Pollard's set is effectively streamlined, but the costumes are comfortably trendy. There is earth-shaking sound design by Mikhail Fiskel, but also the clearest, most honorable treatment of Shakespearean language I've seen and heard on a Chicago-area stage. Though removed of clutter and speaking the same words that have been spoken for centuries, Writers' "Hamlet" feels fresh and rediscovered.
