Hamming Up Hamlet
Tuesday, May 13th by scott malia
Do you think you’re up for A Night in Elsinore? With murders, potential incest, suicides and some poisonous sword fighting, it might not be the getaway it sounds like. A Night in Elsinore is a new production that, what else, parodies Shakespeare. The object of its ribbing is none other than Hamlet. More than any other of The Bard’s plays, Hamlet has taken its share of ribbing. Some plays have one-off jokes about mommy issues or troubled monarchies. Other plays devote their entirety to rethinking the classic story from a comic point of view.
In a way, it makes sense. A comic rip-off of King John probably wouldn’t be as successful due to the dearth of productions of the play. Still, are there things about Hamlet that make it ripe for roasting other than its fame? Making fun of tragedies dates as far back as Ancient Greece, when playwrights would present three tragedies followed by a short comic piece that often made fun of the works that preceded it. I know if I watched a day’s worth of Greek tragedies, I’d need a few chuckles.
Hamlet is no more or less grave than some of the other tragedies, it is just further suffused into pop culture. A riff on King John would be a riff on King John. A riff on Hamlet is a riff not just on the play, but also on its integration into pop culture. In a way, we’re not laughing at Hamlet, we’re laughing at ourselves laughing at Hamlet.
