Use your illusion

Bruce Campbell (of Evil Dead fame) has this great, snarky line in Spider-Man 2 while playing a theater usher with a god complex: "Oh, I'm sorry, sir. No one will be seated after the doors are closed. It helps maintain the illusion." Hold that thought for a minute.

Yesterday I went to see the latest production of Hamlet to come through the area, one staged by the Ann Arbor Young Actors' Guild. That brings to seven the number of times I've seen Hamlet performed since I started grad school:

• Royal Shakespeare Company -- London, UK (2001)
• U of M Department of Theatre and Drama -- Ann Arbor, MI (2002)
• Great Lakes Theater Festival -- Cleveland, OH (2003)
• Zeitgeist Theatre (as Hamlet Machine Hamlet) -- Detroit, MI (2003)
• Actors' Theatre Company -- Columbus, OH (2004)
• Michigan Shakespeare Festival -- Jackson, MI (2006)
• Young Actors' Guild -- Ann Arbor, MI (2007)

Basically, if anyone puts on Hamlet within a couple hours' drive of Ann Arbor, I'm there. Some of these productions have been good, some not so good, and some downright awful. The best of the bunch was probably the RSC's -- big surprise, right? Samuel West -- who you might know from 2004's Van Helsing -- played a great Dane, though I never got over his resemblance to William Katt from Greatest American Hero. The one U of M staged in 2002 wasn't bad, either -- I'd never thought of Hamlet as a scrawny nerd, but I kind of connected with that.

The production yesterday wasn't bad at all, especially for high school kids. The guys who played the lead and Claudius were especially good. Except for this one scene...

At one point in the play, Hamlet writes something down. This might be it:

My tables, my tables, -- meet it is I set it down!
That one may smile, and smile, and be a villain! (I.V.107-8)

In the YAG version, Hamlet sits down at the edge of the stage, takes out a piece of paper and a pen, clicks the end of the pen and starts writing. Did you get that? Hamlet clicks the end of the pen.

Hamlet uses a clickie pen?

Took me out of the moment, but it must be saying something about the production that I was in the moment to begin with. Mental note to self: If I ever play the Dane, no clickie pen! It helps maintain the illusion!

(For the record I'm still smarting over two productions that I missed in Illinois: one outside of Bloomington-Normal in 2004 and one in Chicago, 2006. But they were 5 1/2 and 4 hours away, respectively.)