Oh, Proud Death
Rating: 4
Hamlet vs. Zombies
KC Fringe Festival
This is a merging of two genres that works surprisingly well. At its heart, this is a shoot'em up, as so many Zombie movies are. One of the reasons that it worked so well is that the actors were almost uniformly good. I get the feeling that whoever wrote the script was particularly fond of the original Horatio (as I am), as he is given a lot of time on stage and is very well played, to boot. Eli Kurtz as Hamlet plays a cerebral but not so melancholy Dane. He and Horatio play off of each other beautifully, especially when discussing the disposal of Hamlet's dead/undead/dead again father. Hamlet's mother is well played as a ditzy brunette. Ophelia is definitely an improvement over the original, first bothered by her defenselessness and then going Rambo on the zombies. Claudius is dead on sneaky, sniveling evil.
Loved the confetti for blood as special effects, and the revolving troop of zombies that kept coming back as new zombies. The confetti made it obvious and yet funny every time a zombie bought it. The fact that they did not use blanks but had the characters say bang when their guns went off was a little odd, but the characters didn't forget or seem self-conscious and I quickly got used to it.
The play was at its best when improving on Shakespeare, such as having Hamlet say his soliloquies into his cell phone, or the much more logical plot line involving Rosencranz and Guildenstern. I think it missed a few opportunities for humor-it was not laugh out loud funny. There was too much action in the last part and not enough suspense. After all, in the original most everybody dies in the end-there should have been more doubt as to who was going to make it. All in all, it was a good play and I am looking forward to whatever Skinny Improv brings us next year.
(oh, and the kissing was just gross. Yech)
No comments:
Post a Comment