A Year of Shakespeare

It will be awhile until I get to Hamlet. But performances, of course, are going on all the time.

I’m drawn to a new interpretation with an 80’s twist…or, as the article calls it, “Shakespeare meets John Hughes.”

I’m a big fan of everything Mr. Hughes ever did. He had a magic touch for capturing contemporary teen angst in a way most adults either quickly forget or never understood to begin with.

The angsty teen? Hamlet. The jock? Laertes. The waifish wallflower? Ophelia.

I’m not quite sure about bringing that same sensibility to a play with such heavy ethical and metaphysical overtones as Hamlet. Then again, Shakespeare has already been subjected to every permutation under the sun and somehow managed to survive. He, like everyone who actually lived through the 80’s, will humbly move on.

Perhaps it’s inevitable that each generation fuses its own iconic era with the evergreen qualities of Shakespeare. I chuckle aloud imagining his plays filtered through such 80’s classics as Say Anything, The Breakfast Club and Footloose.

Only one of these was created by the genius of John Hughes. But there really was a certain innocence and idealism to that decade which has long since given way to a hip, ironic, jaded sensibility.

The world is much too with us, as another famous poet once said. I would love to experience what Shakespeare looks and sounds like through Mr. Hughes’ heartfelt, iconic point of view.

For more info and a fun read on this version of Hamlet, click HERE.

This entry was posted on 2014/03/21 at 10:16 pm and is filed under Hamlet, Performance with tags Ferris Bueller's Day Off, John Hughes, the 80's. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.