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Hamlet

Editorial Review

Editorial Review

"What a piece of work is a man!" ponders Hamlet in Shakespeare's play of the same name. Although used in irony to describe the foibles and disparities of mankind, it's a description easily applied to award-winning actor Cowell, who stars in the hit series Love My Way and played the main role in the Australian film Noise.

Hamlet believes that his father was killed by his uncle, Claudius, who has since married Hamlet's mother and taken the throne as king. Charting the course of madness, both real and imagined, as well as themes of treachery, revenge, corruption and incest, this is one the Bard's most enduring masterpieces. However, instead of being a traditional revenge story, Hamlet concentrates on the predicament of Hamlet himself as he is tasked with correcting an act of injustice that he will never have sufficient knowledge about.

When Shakespeare wrote his play at the juncture of the 16th and 17th centuries, Hamlet touched upon issues prevalent in Renaissance humanism, a philosophical movement that questioned and explored man's place in the world. Dealing with the idea that one should regulate one's action with one's understanding of the problem at hand was a major part of this movement's ideology, and is also one reflected by Hamlet in many of his speeches.

Director Marion Potts says, "The play is the character and the character is the play: together they explore the spectrum of human emotion and, in this, they scope the limits of our condition. He [Hamlet] is us, transcends us, and then reads us back to ourselves."

A deep and reflective view of our own age, Potts has created a contemporary and poignant interpretation of this thought-provoking tragedy.

Patrick Tangye