Hamletmachine is, quite clearly, a very bold play. By re-imagining Hamlet, an archetypal tragedy, as an obscenity laced seven page play in which Hamlet “puts the make-up of a whore on his face”, Muller seems to have literally fed Hamlet into some kind of machine that breaks a play up and concentrates all its darkest parts into a couple of pages. The extremely common, grotesque language used in Hamletmachine creates a world so disgusting that the actor who plays Hamlet can no longer bring himself to participate. Disgust with one’s condition is universal in the world of the play. When the actor playing Hamlet breaks character and goes into a monologue in which he sees himself as both an uprising and a government it is because he can no longer stand the horrible world he must inhabit as Hamlet. The monologue reflects this feeling of being at odds with oneself. Inner conflict is a central theme to the play of Hamlet within the play as well. Hamlet is paralyzed by the horror of his position and cannot bring himself to act with any real direction. He is laughed at by Ophelia, who herself cannot seem to decide who she wants to kill more, herself or everyone else.
The difficulty of Hamletmachine in performance, it seems to me, would be to keep the tone varied. This along with the huge amount of stage action that would need to be created whole by the director makes Hamletmachine a challenge to perform.
The imagery of Hamletmachine is, in a certain way, very clear. Communism is presented as a decaying horror, a prime example of this being three naked women labeled as Marx, Lenin and Mao having their heads split open with an ax. The communist government is roughly equated to Hamlet’s family, a grab bag of murderers and whores. After the symbolic end of the regime, as shown by the death of the Marx, Lenin and Mao surrogates, there is an ice age, a cooling off period. The simplicity of this direction, with no recommendations for how it should be represented other than “snow”, is refreshing and clean feeling. However, the play ends on a note of bitterness, Ophelia declaring that she wants to choke the world to death between her thighs. This seems to reflect Muller’s world view, lying in accordance with his statement that he is “neither a dope - nor hope – dealer”.
A Blog for reading responses and general discussion pertaining to the work generated in our Playwriting II class at Brown University in the Fall of 2007.
Playwriting II - LITR 0210 C
The official and utterly awesome blog for Playwriting II at Brown University in the Autumn of the year 2007.
Please post reading responses and writing exercises to separate threads.
Students should feel free to comment on the responses, and generate new threads for general conversation about subjects covered (plot form, specific plays, etc.)
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1 comment:
HAMLETMACHINE Response
Hamletmachine is, quite clearly, a very bold play. By re-imagining Hamlet, an archetypal tragedy, as an obscenity laced seven page play in which Hamlet “puts the make-up of a whore on his face”, Muller seems to have literally fed Hamlet into some kind of machine that breaks a play up and concentrates all its darkest parts into a couple of pages. The extremely common, grotesque language used in Hamletmachine creates a world so disgusting that the actor who plays Hamlet can no longer bring himself to participate. Disgust with one’s condition is universal in the world of the play. When the actor playing Hamlet breaks character and goes into a monologue in which he sees himself as both an uprising and a government it is because he can no longer stand the horrible world he must inhabit as Hamlet. The monologue reflects this feeling of being at odds with oneself. Inner conflict is a central theme to the play of Hamlet within the play as well. Hamlet is paralyzed by the horror of his position and cannot bring himself to act with any real direction. He is laughed at by Ophelia, who herself cannot seem to decide who she wants to kill more, herself or everyone else.
The difficulty of Hamletmachine in performance, it seems to me, would be to keep the tone varied. This along with the huge amount of stage action that would need to be created whole by the director makes Hamletmachine a challenge to perform.
The imagery of Hamletmachine is, in a certain way, very clear. Communism is presented as a decaying horror, a prime example of this being three naked women labeled as Marx, Lenin and Mao having their heads split open with an ax. The communist government is roughly equated to Hamlet’s family, a grab bag of murderers and whores. After the symbolic end of the regime, as shown by the death of the Marx, Lenin and Mao surrogates, there is an ice age, a cooling off period. The simplicity of this direction, with no recommendations for how it should be represented other than “snow”, is refreshing and clean feeling. However, the play ends on a note of bitterness, Ophelia declaring that she wants to choke the world to death between her thighs. This seems to reflect Muller’s world view, lying in accordance with his statement that he is “neither a dope - nor hope – dealer”.
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