“To be or not to be, that is the question.”
This quote from the classic play “Hamlet” is normally very serious in context, as it originated in a scene in which Prince Hamlet considers suicide.
It becomes significantly less dramatic when Prince Hamlet is angrily trudging across the stage following a moving spotlight.
“The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (Abridged),” as mentioned in the title, covers all the works of Shakespeare, but the show was not a huge hybrid of all the shows thrown together. Instead, it ran through scenes of two plays — “Romeo and Juliet” and “Hamlet.” The remaining 34 plays were otherwise included in interesting ways.
In “Hamlet,” the actors ran through the main scenes of the play, then proceeded to do the entire thing again faster, then backwards.
The cast performing the comedic play was made up of three Carlmont students: junior Denis Yudin, and seniors Adrian Chan and Daniel Thompson.
For the work of “Othello,” the actors did a rap that covered all the major plot points of the story.
All of Shakespeare’s comedies were combined and the outcome was read by the actors while wearing the classic comedic props such as Groucho glasses (the black frames with the large nose attached), a propeller hat, and pop-out eye glasses.
“I thought I was going to have trouble with the amount of lines, but everything turned out fine. The whole experience made me more interested in Shakespeare,” said Yudin.
This comedic atmosphere lasted throughout the entire show along with the inclusion of the audience within the performance. They had a running gag in which one of the actors would run into the audience and violently “throw up” all over the audience whenever their character died.
“It was a turbulent journey. We had two recasts for the same role and we were worried that the team chemistry wouldn’t be good. We also had very little stage time because of the spring play. But it was great. The whole thing was great,” said Chan.
The play had been done before at Carlmont around seven years ago with the same director, Emily York.
York is a Carlmont graduate and the daughter of the head of the Carlmont drama department, Nancy Martin.
Chan said, “All in all, I’m glad this play was my last play at Carlmont.”
