OSF 2010 Season opens February 19th!

In this sometimes dreary third week of February, Clan Murphy is all a-quiver that the wheel has not only turned on another new season of LOST, but is about to turn on another new season of the Oregon Shakespeare Festival. Previews begin on February the 19th! Your Humble Bardolater will be attending (with her better [...]

Vidclips from Hamlet (1948) starring and directed by Laurence Olivier

Here is a video clip of the “Get thee to a nunnery scene” (with Jean Simmons as Ophelia) from the 1948 Hamlet directed by and starring Laurence Olivier:
(Click here to read our review of this film)

Vidclips from Kenneth Branagh's 1996 Hamlet

The following are videoclips from Kenneth Branagh’s 1996 Hamlet
(Click here for our review of this film.)
“To be, or not to be…” (Act III, scene 1)
“How all occasions…” (Act IV, scene 4)

Hamlet (1990) starring Mel Gibson, directed by Franco Zeffirelli

© 2002 Debra Murphy
In a Catholic family which includes a daughter who wore a Braveheart tee threadbare, a mother who has seen Signs three times on the big screen, and several men folk who, in spite of the female Murphys’ incessant pratings about Mel Gibson being one of the Almighty’s prettier creations, are nonetheless willing [...]

Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead (1991) written & directed by Tom Stoppard

starring Gary Oldman, Tim Roth and Richard Dreyfuss
© 1999 Debra Murphy and John Murphy
Debra’s take:
Imagine Hamlet told from the slightly befuddled points of view of poor, doomed Rosencrantz and Guildenstern — or is it Guildenstern and Rosencrantz? — two sublime Nobodies who, willy-nilly, become pawns in Claudius’ and Hamlet’s schemes to outfox one another. [...]

Hamlet (1996) starring and directed by Kenneth Branagh

© John Murphy, 2005
Kenneth Branagh is one of the most exciting filmmakers working today. Or is he working? I mean, as a director? He directed a movie called Listening two years ago, which nobody’s heard of, and Love’s Labour’s Lost (2000) was barely a blip on the radar. That would place this film, Hamlet, quite [...]

Hamlet (1964) starring Richard Burton, directed by John Gielgud and Bill Collerhan

© Debra Murphy, 2000
In 1964, theatre history was made and legends augmented, if not born, when John Gielgud directed Richard Burton in a production of Hamlet on Broadway. The production might have remained nothing but a legend to most of us, who did not have the pleasure of seeing it first-hand, had it not been [...]

Hamlet (2000) starring Ethan Hawke, directed by Michael Almereyda

© 2000 John Murphy
Hardcore Shakespeare traditionalists who insist on “purity” of interpretation (i.e. a whole lot of tights and prepubescent boys in drag) miss the essential genius of the Bard’s plays. The reason Shakespeare endures 400 years after his death is his ability to transcend the boundaries of time, geography, and culture by addressing in [...]

Hamlet (1948) directed by and starring Laurence Olivier

© 2007 John Murphy
O’erstepping the Modesty of Nature
“Suit the action to the word, the word to the action, with this special observance, that you o’erstep not the modesty of nature. For anything so overdone is from the purpose of playing, whose end, both at the first and now, was and is, to hold, as ’twere, [...]

latest BBC Hamlet starring David Tennant

No news yet when this British production will be aired on US television, but in the meantime, to keep our mouths watering, the BBC has launched a very nice website indeed, including stuff on past BBC productions of the play, including the 1980 Derek Jacobi version we reviewed here. (Speaking of which, Patrick Stewart, almost [...]

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