May 07

Bleak Travels Through “Hamlet Asylum”

Presented by The Calliope Project

May 3, 4, 10, and 11th at 8PM
Green Street Studios Theatre
185 Green St
Cambridge MA
The Calliope Project Facebook Page

Review by the lovely Gillian Daniels

**EXPLICIT CONTENT INCLUDING RAPE AND VIOLENCE**

Some contemporary productions of Hamlet play with the ambiguity of the Prince of Denmark’s sanity.  Is he seeking justice or satisfying a personal vendetta with the logic of a “ghost” to back him up, “mad north-north-west” or just vengeful?  In Hamlet Asylum, this ambiguity is dismissed.  Most of the play clearly takes place in the head of Bryan Bernfield’s Hamlet.  A masked Greek chorus (Meghan Kelly, Amiel Bowers, and Samuel Guerin) speak in the voice of his father, his confidant Horatio, the gravediggers, and others, all in the guise of Hamlet’s repressed desires.   It’s a clever idea.  The result, though,
is a production both rich with symbols and dark with melodrama. Continue reading