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The cast's final curtain call
T. Lucas photos |
T. Lucas
St. Michael's School drama students presented the humorous satire 'Dr. Pepper Presents Disney's Hamlet', penned by Don Zolidis, from May 21 through May 23 last week. Friday's show was sold out. The premise: how do you run a drama department where the budget is $8.00 for the year? The answer: corporate sponsorship, and lots of it.
Hamlet with product placement works surprisingly well, if the audience is not expecting Shakespearean tragedy. The students worked very hard to bring together a play with a number of scene changes, mood shifts, and a very full script. They worked on it since January, and their efforts showed with well delivered lines, good costumes and believable performances. The whole cast delivered on this one, from the title character to servant #5. Keep running, servant 5! You may make it to the great Shuffleboard Showdown.
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| Chip and Jessie: Sold on sponsorship |
I would not be surprised if there were people who left the play wondering if Pringles potato chips really comes in the flavours of blueberry and soft-shelled crab (they do). Some may even have looked it up after the show, being invited to by narrators Chip and Jessie, well played by Andrew Strong and Isabelle Charette.
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| Alas! Poor Yorick has no information to share with Hamlet (Zech Nightingale) |
The play contained many of the core elements of Hamlet. There was Denmark, the rain, the ghost of the departed king, and the play within the play. The castle included characters that had the right names: Polonius, Ophelia, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, and of course Hamlet.
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Polonius shares Dr. Peppers with Ophelia and Laertes
(Bailey McDougall, Sadie Bannick and Kayden Edwards) |
Some of the changes included the setting of the 'Dr. Pepper Castle', a dearth of iambic pentameter, and more humour than expected in a treacherous-murder filled drama. Although ghosts do play a part in the original play, in this version there is a segment brought to us by the latest hottest video game, replete with zombies and werewolves. BooYa! MTV hosts this portion, and it is not yo' mama's Shakespeare. This is a Hamlet who gets the girl and walks off into the sunset on a sandy beach at Beaches Family Resorts via Carnival Cruise Lines.
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Gertrude and Claudius are concerned, Hamlet seeks solace in gatorade
(Rebecca Lowry, Emilie Charette, Zech Nightingale) |
Kudos to Rebecca Lowry, who portrayed Queen Gertrude. Throughout most of the show she portrays the sweet, compliant and doting wife to her new husband King Claudius, played by Emilie Charette. It is a saccharine role that makes one suspect that the character of Gertrude had ingested some of the behavioral modification drugs GlaxoSmithKline Pharmecutical company hawked throughout the show. There is one scene where that changes, in which Lowry showed a feral ferocity that made even the murderous new king back down from one portion of his wicked plan.
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| Laertes and Hamlet move from shuffleboard to swordplay as others look on |
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| Ophelia returns for the final scene. Does she finally have a happy ending? |
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