Tiny Hamlet

Love this poster, from Tiny Ninja Theater's production of Hamlet. They've also produced Romeo and Juliet and Macbeth, all to very good reviews. From the group's site: "Tiny Ninja Theater is a New York City-based company dedicated to the principle that 'there are no small parts, only small actors.' It was founded in 1999 by company director Dov Weinstein."

The Ghost is played by a mouth with a ninja in it.

Excerpts from Curtain Up's review:

"Tiny Ninja Hamlet, oddly enough, is just what it sounds like -- Hamlet performed with tiny plastic ninja figurines, all manipulated by Dov Weinstein. It's just what every eight-year-old boy does with his toy soldiers, only this is, you know, Hamlet."

"It's one of the most inventive shows I've ever seen. Using televisions, small pin lights and smaller cameras, the tiny plastic world is writ large for the audience. The figures (mostly ninjas, but there are other sorts of figurines) are moved about on three briefcase-size stages."

"Weinstein does an excellent job of maneuvering the ninjas, and of providing clear, distinct voices for each one even though each is no more than an inch tall."

Poster

Poster by Polish designer Leonard Konopelski, 1974

Of our time...For our time.

Wow. I was doing a random Hamlet image search and found this. From 1969. I'm netflixing this. Looks like Hamlet is a vampire, like this could've been a poster for a Hammer film--Hammer studios in England churned out lots of vampire flicks in the 60s & the women were always shagadelic-Brit-chicks in diaphanous wench-type-dresses. With cleavage for days. Like in this poster.

I found one review through imdb, from Time Magazine. The review is hilariously gushing.

On Williamson: "His eyes sear the viewer. He is not speaking to the air; he is speaking to you. As far as Williamson is concerned, elocution be damned. Poetry be damned. Meaning is all. Never has Hamlet been rendered with more clarity or more biting timeliness, and that includes Gielgud, Olivier and Burton. Shakespeare held the mirror up to nature. Williamson holds a mirror up to the soul."

On Marianne: "Marianne Faithfull's Ophelia is remarkably affecting. She is ethereal, vulnerable, and in some strange way purer than the infancy of truth." (ed. note: ummmmmmm)

I have to say, though, I love the opening paragraph of the review. The guy who wrote it obviously just loves Hamlet and is effusive from the start. This is lovely:

"Hamlet has obsessed the Western mind for 369 years. Why? It is not because most people love great works of art. On the contrary, most people find great works of art oppressive, since such works invariably center on the nature of human destiny, and that destiny is tragic. Quite simply, Hamlet is a world, and like the world, it cannot be ignored. Every man has lived some part of the play, and to be a man is to be inextricably involved in the play. Hamlet probes and grips the profound themes of existence—death, love, time, fidelity, friendship, family, the relationships of a man and a woman, a son and father, a mother and son, murder and madness. Above all, it probes the value of existence, man's most anguishing question put in the form that every man knows from the time he first hears and ponders it—to be or not to be."

Poster/Art

I love this. Click to see it large. By Eric Jonsson.