In their new Hamlet, the Wooster Group takes a maximalist approach to reviving a classic, attempting to duplicate a (slightly doctored) film of Richard Burton’s 1964 production. That’s weird enough to sound promising, full of potential insights. But the Woosters never improve on their juicy premise. After a hundred times or so, the novelty of watching everyone and everything onstage shift six inches to the left because some cameraman happened to twitch one night 43 years ago grows tiresome. Who wants to see performers this good shackled by what somebody else did? I want to see Kate Valk’s Gertrude, not Kate Valk’s Eileen Herlie’s Gertrude.
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'Hamlet'
Hamlet
By William Shakespeare. Produced by the Wooster Group at The Public Theater.
E-mail: theatercritic@newyorkmag.com.
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