http://www.shakespeares-globe.org/theatre/annualtheatreseason/hamlet/

QUOTE:
The Factory bring their unique production of Hamlet to the Globe for a special anniversary performance.

The project is based on the ideas of director Tim Carroll. Inspired by his 2006 Budapest production of Hamlet, and developed since then with The Factory, he explored a system where every actor learns multiple parts. The audience and chance-selection dictate the different casting permutations each night. The result is a production that is free-moving, fresh, and entirely different every evening.

There are no designated props. Any object that you see on stage or used by an actor will come from the audience. It may be a shoe, a phone, a inflatable dingy... ANYTHING you can bring in to be used. Audience members are encouraged to bring as weird and bold a prop that they can think of!

I know I'm OTF's resident fuddyduddy but WTF? Is it just me?

Sounds like fun to me.

That does sound like fun. Sorry Tubbs.

Shakespeare? Hamlet? The Globe?

Maybe they could dress like It's A Knockout while they're about it, and have Stuart Hall cackling over the tannoy.

I'm not convinced that it sounds especially fun, but i have no problem with it.

It show insufficient reverence for the bard, Tubby? It can't really be that, so what is the problem?

I think it sounds fucking shit.

I'm going to take some fucking props with me alright. A crown, a skull, and a fucking Nintendo DS to play on whilst the horror unfurls before me on stage.

Except of course I wont be there.

Reverence is it. And I don't want to see someone who normally plays the fifteenth serving wench get the role of Hamlet, and for her and the gravediggers to end up meditating on a mobile phone.

This is the stage. You're the audience. Keep out of what happens on the stage. Go and look up "hierarchy" in a dictionary.

I don't have much reverence for Shakespeare, but this sounds pretty ropey.

QUOTE:
Reverence is it

Then we'll certainly not see eye-to-eye on this. The existence of such reverence is, for me, one reason to do things such as this.

Count me in the fuddy-duddy group. Er...twosome.
But whenever I hear that the Stratford Festival is doing, you know, Twelfth Night, but '1920s Gangster-style, with an all-camp cast' I think "if that's what it takes to keep Shakespeare fresh and engaging, maybe just give it a rest for a couple of years".

QUOTE:
Then we'll certainly not see eye-to-eye on this. The existence of such reverence is, for me, one reason to do things such as this.

Reverence for the play doesn't seem such a bad thing, though I appreciate that's not what I said before. It's rather being treated as a joke here.

Revering the person is indeed pretty silly seeing nothing much is known about him. Probably reverence for anyone is silly. As someone once said of Homer, he makes his men gods and his gods men. The second bit of that's better than the first.

I'm not in favour of reverence; it's just this sounds crap.

I mean, the fact is, Hamlet is dense stuff. The idea of an entire ensemble exploring all the roles--well, I'd be very surprised if the things that work best in the play will work well in the production. It takes hard work, talent and unusual emotional depth to have a decent crack at the lead role alone.

The trouble, for me, with productions that focus on subverting the conventions of the theatre is that I'm not really interested in the conventions of the theatre, as things in themselves. If they're standing in the way of something you want to do, theatrically, for its own sake, then subvert the fuck out of them, but this looks rather as if the company sees theatrical conventions as being in themselves the enemy. If so, that suggests a loss of perspective, and an inflated sense of the importance of ones own professional concerns as an actor or director. It ain't really about you--and too few people in the Business realise that.

Tubbs did you ever see Robert Lapage's one-man Hamlet? It was ac... er, very good indeed.

The Globe is awful, isn't it? Let's be honest here. It's a tourist trap and the productions are usually pretty mediocre. If you can pay attention to them whilst standing in a sea of Spanish students intent on texting/snogging/sleeping their way through it...

I didn't see that, Lyra. The character dominates the play (if not his own destiny), so I can see that working very well.

I've never been to The Globe. It doesn't look too much like a tourist trap though. I mean, are the crowds pulled in by Timon of Athens?