feeling listless

Shakespeare Just to prove that everything is a matter of taste, a new production receives this staggeringly negative review: "(Director) Kiselov plays fast and loose with Shakespeare's text, to no apparent end. That he edits it isn't the issue-- every director cuts Hamlet , if only to shorten its running time. Here, Kiselov cuts the play's entire first scene, allegedly to hasten the drama's family dynamic. Yet he loses any coherent thematic focus by the end of the first act. He reassigns dialogue from one character to another, and inexplicably alters phrases: Hamlet's famous declaration that "there are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy," oddly becomes " our philosophy." ... and also a piece which sees the editing as a positive adjustment ... "This dramatic, albeit abridged, production opens with a black-clad, grieving young Hamlet. We know something is terribly wrong from the get-go - deleting the famous traditional opening scene does not alter the dark mood at all. A solitary Hamlet against a stark background and an open grave create a foreboding strong enough to endure throughout this tragedy. The deletion shaves time and characters from the play and brings the audience into the core of the tragedy quickly and more accessibly."