Who’s there? … There's something rotten in the state of Denmark... To be or not to be... Alas, poor Yorick... The readiness is all... The rest is silence.
This Hamlet is cut down to 140 minutes, while remaining a veritable dictionary of coinages and quotations. The play will be performed in an indeterminate modern era - a first for the Winchester Players - and the production promises careful attention to the text, a score of sound effects and original music, and a focus on the dark humour in Shakespeare's most famous tragedy.
Winchester Players are thrilled to be returning to Cornwall, after an interval of eight years. Simon Taylor, who has directed all Winchester’s productions, founded the company in 1993, expressly for the Minack Theatre season, starting with Twelfth Night, then Much Ado About Nothing. Apart from an original adaptation of Great Expectations, it has been all Shakespeare, including A Midsummer Night's Dream, Romeo and Juliet, Love's Labour’s Lost, As You Like It, King Lear and the 75th anniversary of The Tempest (2007). The first casts were largely amateur, but more and more professional and ex-professional actors have become involved over the years.