Hamlet Lives...Briefly

A local library offloading its supply of old LP's led to a find for the Hamlet collection.  The acquisition is a 1961 work entitled "Living Shakespeare:  Hamlet."  It is a strange piece.  As the editor, Bernard Grebanier, states in the written introduction to the LP, "Indeed, many advantages accrue from listening to this play."  With that sentiment, I can agree.  One too often misses the beauty of Shakespeare's language when it is buried underneath layers of stage action and directorial license.

The oddity here, though, is the inability of the listener to listen to Shakespeare's words.  The play has been drastically edited to fit onto one double-sided LP.  The running time for the entire work is approximately 60 minutes.  That is barely enough time to get the gist of the story, which is why Mr. Grebanier advises the listener to read the entire work prior to listening.  (A full written text of the play accompanies the LP.)  The plot here has been reduced to the main action of the story, with all subplots and many side characters removed.  A narrator serves occasionally to fill the gaps with voice-overs of what was eliminated.

The sound quality of the recording was good.  As one might expect of a disc of that age, there were occasional skips.  It was in excellent condition otherwise, and it did justice to Michael Redgrave in the title role.  His was the one name that I recognized, having seen him in the film, The Dam Busters.  Hearing him on the LP made me wish that it were a fuller, video presentation of the play.

The LP came with a script to follow the words.  Problematically, in places it did not match the action on the recording.  For instance, there is an extended stage direction describing the dumb show, which is not presented at all.  At least the script provided something to hold my attention while listening to the words.  It was strange, though, to read a stage direction, "They play" while hearing the metallic clanging of rapiers.

I suppose that this might be useful in a classroom setting, but I wonder why anyone might choose this instead of a legitimate, full version of the play.  Well intentioned, it is just a bizarre and rather pointless work.