Kupenga Kwa Hamlet

November 4^th 2010 I attended the Ustinov theatre to watch the performance of Hamlet. This performance was done by two Zimbabwean male actors. The combination of Shakespeare’s Hamlet and their culture put into the piece really did make a successful mix.

With gestures and changes to physicality the two male actors performed switching from character to character. The actors only used a different hand gesture and body language to distinguish the fact they had slipped into a different character. A very hard thing to do but the actors managed to pull this humorous performance off very well.

The set design used for this performance was very plain and basic. The performance only used a bare mat and a pot as the props, which throughout the performance changed position and were used for many different things, some being the difference in a scene change, musical instruments and even bodies in a scene

The two actors wore orange boiler suits, which to begin with made me forget I was watching a different interpretation of hamlet, and think of people from prison camps in America. For a short period of time I did believe this and then realised I was watching Hamlet when they started their readings of the script.

In this specific performance of Hamlet, audience participation was chosen to be used in one particular part of the performance, where the actors needed more people on stage. Considering this performance was only a two man piece, the only way they could have done this was to use audience participation, which slotted into the piece very well.

Although everything the characters did made this performance very humorous and enjoyable, I lost the concept of Hamlet and did not quite understand where we were supposed to be in the play. For this reason I did not really enjoy this performance although I did find it very interesting, the way different people can use the script, change it, and use their own interpretations in their own directions and performances.