Rewriting Hamlet

Abstract

First of all it’s important to recognize the fact that Vancouver is a town where educated and aware people think it’s clever to say that Shakespeare’s a bore. Vancouver theatre is entertainment theatre, like it or lump it, and even the greatest of plays must be made to conform. Hence, Richard Ouzounian, doing his M.A. thesis production at U.B.C. in 1972, was able to launch a stellar career by marrying Sondheim and the Marx brothers to Beatrice and Benedict in a production of Much Ado About Nothing, to set a tone for directorial approach that Vancouver theatre has still not been able to get past. Of course, it’s not fair to blame Ouzounian for all outlandish directorial concepts for Shakespeare. The precedents had been set in the sixties by Peter Brook with his gymnastic Midsummer Night’s Dream and existential Lear. Ouzounian’s awesome feat was to make it imperative that the post-Brookian director’s concept be fun. He put a joie in jeu that West Coast directors have been struggling with ever since. In their attempts to cram Shakespeare with entertainment values, they have frequently failed not only to make his plays more accessible, but also to impress audiences with any sense of the greatness of his writing. It isn’t my contention that these directors should not have attempted their radical pop interpretations of Elizabethan texts. I would suggest, however, that perhaps they failed because they didn’t go far enough. No matter how high their flashy stagings flew, when it came time to talk the whole thing bogged down in charmless anachronism.