Hamlet and Juliet

Festivals

Monday February 16, 2015 Comments

Comments Print article

I do love my Shakespeare: in the park, in amateur theatre, serious, brooding, bawdy, and, since I’m no purist, I also love the imaginative liberties certain Shakespearean productions take, particularly in the form of parody, spoof and mockery. Hamlet and Juliet is one such play.

“This is not real theatre,” the boys from Sound and Fury warned us, beginning before the show actually began, welcoming their audience, making jokes at their expense, creating an atmosphere of belonging. One warned us that the show was only going to be as fun as we made it. I get what they mean, but pshaw; these guys made it fun.

So Hamlet is down. His father has just died and his mother is marrying his uncle and Ophelia – Ophelia? No, this Hamlet isn’t interested in her because, come now, she is rather boring, and anyway, he’s just met Juliet. Juliet! The 13-year-old lush at the balcony! These two are going to have quite a bad romance, so be prepared for death.

Each of the three players takes on a handful of major and minor characters in Hamlet and Juliet, keeping it real with a few quotable lines and then getting downright silly with improv.

There are plenty of pop-cultural references, some jokes that are not really made in good-taste, and not-such good, clean comedy (Friar Lawrence is, after all, a complete pervert). But as lewd as this play is, the two young teenagers in the crowd were not only laughing at the jokes, they had become a part of the jokes, so inclusivity seems to be the most important aspect of the performance, making Hamlet and Juliet a great way to spend an hour.

Forget the nunnery; get thee to Bally tent in Gluttony, where Hamlet and Juliet plays nightly – except for Mondays – until March 1.

See InDaily’s 2015 Adelaide Fringe hub for all our reviews and interviews.

Make a comment View comment guidelines

Jump to next article

Support local arts journalism

Your support will help us continue the important work of InReview in publishing free professional journalism that celebrates, interrogates and amplifies arts and culture in South Australia.

Donate Here

Comments

Show comments

Will my comment be published? Read the guidelines.

. You are free to republish the text and graphics contained in this article online and in print, on the condition that you follow our republishing guidelines.

You must attribute the author and note prominently that the article was originally published by InReview. You must also inlude a link to InReview. Please note that images are not generally included in this creative commons licence as in most cases we are not the copyright owner. However, if the image has an InReview photographer credit or is marked as “supplied”, you are free to republish it with the appropriate credits.

We recommend you set the canonical link of this content to https://inreview.com.au/inreview/festivals/2015/02/16/hamlet-juliet/ to insure that your SEO is not penalised.

<h1>Hamlet and Juliet</h1>

<address><a href="https://inreview.com.au/contributors/heather-taylor-johnson/" class="author">Heather Taylor Johnson</a></address>
											
							I do love my Shakespeare: in the park, in amateur theatre, serious, brooding, bawdy, and, since I’m no purist, I also love the imaginative liberties certain Shakespearean productions take, particularly in the form of parody, spoof and mockery. Hamlet and Juliet is one such play.
“This is not real theatre,” the boys from Sound and Fury warned us, beginning before the show actually began, welcoming their audience, making jokes at their expense, creating an atmosphere of belonging. One warned us that the show was only going to be as fun as we made it. I get what they mean, but pshaw; these guys made it fun.
So Hamlet is down. His father has just died and his mother is marrying his uncle and Ophelia – Ophelia? No, this Hamlet isn’t interested in her because, come now, she is rather boring, and anyway, he’s just met Juliet. Juliet! The 13-year-old lush at the balcony! These two are going to have quite a bad romance, so be prepared for death.
Each of the three players takes on a handful of major and minor characters in Hamlet and Juliet, keeping it real with a few quotable lines and then getting downright silly with improv.
There are plenty of pop-cultural references, some jokes that are not really made in good-taste, and not-such good, clean comedy (Friar Lawrence is, after all, a complete pervert). But as lewd as this play is, the two young teenagers in the crowd were not only laughing at the jokes, they had become a part of the jokes, so inclusivity seems to be the most important aspect of the performance, making Hamlet and Juliet a great way to spend an hour.
Forget the nunnery; get thee to Bally tent in Gluttony, where Hamlet and Juliet plays nightly – except for Mondays – until March 1.
See InDaily’s <a href="http://indaily.com.au/arts-and-culture/2015/02/16/2015-adelaide-fringe-hub/">2015 Adelaide Fringe hub</a> for all our reviews and interviews.
 
 
							This article is republished from <a href="https://inreview.com.au" target=_blank rel="canonical">InReview</a> under a Creative Commons licence. Read the <a href="https://inreview.com.au/inreview/festivals/2015/02/16/hamlet-juliet/" target=_blank rel="canonical">original article</a>.
							<link href="https://inreview.com.au/inreview/festivals/2015/02/16/hamlet-juliet/" rel="canonical">

<a href="https://inreview.com.au" target="_blank" rel="noopener">InReview</a> is an open access, non-profit arts and culture journalism project. Readers can <a href="https://artists.australianculturalfund.org.au/s/project/a2E9q0000008PVN/inreview-sa-20222023" target="_blank" rel="noopener">support our work with a donation</a>. Subscribe to InReview’s free weekly newsletter <a href="https://inreview.com.au/subscribe/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">here</a>.
							<img src="https://inreview.com.au/pixel2.png?cc_article=hamlet-juliet" width="1" height="1">

Copied to Clipboard