Friday, March 14, 2003  Bell Shakespeare Company: Hamlet
(Sydney, 2003)  Hamlet. Bell Shakespeare Company. Playhouse,
Sydney Opera House, March 14, 2003. Sydney season ends April 17.
Then Canberra, Melbourne, Hobart and regional centres.  For
comment on Bell Shakespeare's 2008 production of Hamlet, click
here.  John Bell's production of Hamlet is a revelation. Yet it
is one of the simplest, most literal takes on this play of
infinite variety.  Instead of portraying Hamlet as some mincing
boy incapable of 'manly' action, Bell does something almost
shockingly obvious. He demands that we consider things from
Hamlet's perspective.  The young man has seen the ghost of his
dead father, old king Hamlet, who demands that the boy "Revenge
his foul and most unnatural murder." The ghost accuses Claudius,
the dead king's brother, of that murder. Claudius, in the
meantime, has seized the throne from young Hamlet (the rightful
heir) and married the widowed Gertrude, his own sister-in-law
and Prince Hamlet's mother.  In Joh