HAMLET!
Great Exploitations at ImprovOlympic Theater
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But these days productions of his comedies most always seem dreadfully labored and outdated. Jokes make so little sense that actors guffaw at intolerable levels after uttering them, attempting to suck the audience into thinking the jokes are funny. And to a modern, jaded audience, some of the physical humor can seem sub-Benny Hill. (Anyone else see that Midsummer Night’s Dream where Pyramus and Thisbe speak through the wall’s anus?) With very few actors or directors able to mine the humor of Shakespeare (Kenneth Branagh is one of the best at it), but many a wise guy able to make fun of him, it’s no wonder that a goofy piece of musical fluff like Great Exploitations’ Hamlet! can get a hundred times more sincere laughs than Shakespeare’s Herd’s dull take on The Comedy of Errors. Clearly, making fun of Shakespeare is easier than making Shakespeare funny.
Michael Thomas and Jeff Richmond’s musical comedy Hamlet! is one of the most unabashedly dopey works I’ve seen in quite some time. Its humor has a lot more in common with the Naked Gun films than with anything the bard ever penned, but it is also fast-paced, witty, and so gleefully performed that it becomes irresistible.
Someday someone out there might do a funny production of The Comedy of Errors. But after sitting through the BBC production with Roger Daltrey (blech) and the first act of that Goodman Theatre production featuring the Flying Karamazov Brothers (very bad date), I started to wonder. And after Shakespeare’s Herd’s production of this separated-at-birth-reunited-at-long-last-everybody-happy-ever-after play, I’m still wondering.
