Kathryn McGill with Oklahoma Shakespeare in the Park. set to retire
Kathryn McGill, Oklahoma Shakespeare in the Park’s executive and artistic director and co-founder, talks about retiring and the upcoming 40th season.
When Oklahoma Shakespeare in the Park last staged “Hamlet,” Joshua Murray played the supporting part of Guildenstern, one of the pair of two-faced friends paid to spy on the title character by his murderous, conniving uncle.
Now, the recent University of Oklahoma graduate is taking up the legendary skull and soliloquies of the main character in the venerable Oklahoma City professional theater’s new production of “Hamlet.”
“It definitely has been one of the most demanding roles I’ve ever played. I even voiced hesitation with it when Tyler (Woods, the show’s director) first asked me if I want to audition for it or not. I knew the weight behind it,” Murray told The Oklahoman.
“Growing up, I never once thought of myself as a leading actor, always as a supporting actor. I guess that’s how I see myself in life, too. But then getting William and now Hamlet, it was like, ‘OK, maybe I need to start thinking more that I can play these leading roles.'”
After taking on the role of William Shakespeare himself last year in Oklahoma Shakespeare in the Park’s production of “Shakespeare in Love,” Murray is playing Hamlet in one of The Bard’s most iconic plays, with performances Sept. 12-29 at the Shakespeare Gardens Outdoor Amphitheatre in the Paseo Arts District.
How is this year’s production of ‘Hamlet’ a do-over?
With the final outdoor show of its 40th anniversary season, Oklahoma Shakespeare in the Park is celebrating fall with Shakestoberfest at 6 p.m. Sept. 21. The “Hamlet” pre-show event will include beer tastings, bratwurst and a stage combat demonstration with Kris Kuss, who an associate professor of theater at Oklahoma City University.
The new production of “Hamlet” is a do-over for the long-running nonprofit theater: Oklahoma Shakespeare last staged the well-loved tragedy in summer 2022, but the company was forced to cancel half the performances after a COVID-19 outbreak among the cast.
“It just felt like we didn’t really get a chance to do it, and we wanted to. We felt like this being our 40th season, and this being The Show with a capital T, you gotta do it in this season. So, we thought, why not?” said Woods, Oklahoma Shakespeare’s new artistic and executive director.
Throughout this year, the OKC theater has marked its milestone anniversary by staging some of Shakespeare’s most beloved plays. With the exception of the upcoming season finale — the annual original holiday favorite “Jane Austen’s Christmas Cracker,” set for Dec. 5-22 at Oklahoma Shakespeare’s indoor black-box theater in the Paseo — the company’s 40th season has consisted of an array of The Bard’s perennially popular titles, with “Hamlet” as the Shakespearean big finish.
“Tyler has definitely been a very, very supportive director and a friend, too, just checking in, seeing how I am, because this show is draining,” Murray said.
What makes ‘Hamlet’ one of Shakespeare’s most iconic plays?
“Hamlet” is a ghost story, a psychological drama, a political epic and a family saga, all rolled up into one of Shakespeare’s most famous tragedies.
“Shakespeare, in great Shakespearean dramatic form, give us the best soap opera plot you could ever write. It’s wonderful: You’ve got murder, you’ve got ghosts, you’ve got betrayal. There’s love. You’ve got spies, you’ve got invasions, military conquests. You’ve got sword fights. There’s a grave digger and a clown,” said Woods, who is directing “Hamlet” for the second time.
The play follows the titular protagonist, the Prince of Denmark, as he comes home from college to find his father dead, his newly widowed mother Gertrude (Elin Bhaird, retired artistic director of Oklahoma Children’s Theatre) remarried to his uncle, the newly crowned King Claudius (David Weber, assistant professor of theater at Oklahoma State University), and a spooky apparition roaming the palace grounds. When he learns that his father was murdered by his uncle, Hamlet sets out for vengeance.
“I was reading this Harold Bloom essay, and he calls ‘Hamlet’ post-Shakespearean, which I think that’s a fascinating way to look at it. It’s basically to say that we still haven’t even caught up to ‘Hamlet’ yet. … I think that he represents the best and sometimes, honestly, the worst of humanity,” said Woods, who is directing his first show for Oklahoma Shakespeare since taking the helm of the company following the retirement this year of co-founder Kathryn McGill.
“All of us have slings and arrows in our lives … and I think watching Hamlet figure out how to navigate that landscape is touching and important for the human experience. Somehow Shakespeare was able to tap into this quintessential humanity 400 years ago in a way that we’ve been celebrating ever since.”
What does ‘Hamlet’ have in common with the popular cinematic anti-hero Deadpool?
Oklahoma Shakespeare’s new production of “Hamlet” is set in contemporary Scandinavia.
“We’re doing modern Scandinavian simplicity to our costume design. It’s all clean whites, off-whites, splashes of color here and there. … In this modern age, I think we’re very jaded. I think we’re very exhausted. I think the political cycle is exhausting; the economic cycles exhausting,” Woods said.
“There’s a lot of things in the news right now to be very concerned about, rightfully so. … But I think that we can sometimes, in all of the hubbub that can justifiably occupy our brain space, lose touch with our own humanity. A play like this reminds us to stop and look around and realize that there are more effectual things happening within us and around us.”
The cast includes several longtime staples of the OKC theater scene, including Mike Waugh as Polonius, adviser to the king and queen; Corey Whaley as Horatio, Hamlet’s loyal friend; Paxton Kliewer as Laertes, Polonius’ son; Jonathan Lynch as Guildenstern; and Ian Clinton as his counterpart, Rosencrantz. Making her Oklahoma Shakespeare debut is Sarah Filek, as Ophelia, Polonius’s innocent daughter, who has Hamlet’s heart.
“There are some of the best known and most celebrated lines in all of not just Shakespeare but in all of literature in this show: ‘Neither a borrower nor a lender be;’ ‘there is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so;’ ‘there are more things in heaven and earth that are dreamt of in your philosophy,'” Woods said.
Naturally, many of those legendary lines belong to the title character. Hamlet delivers several well-known soliloquies in which the troubled prince is actually addressing audiences, breaking the fourth wall in a way that’s still a popular storytelling innovation, as seen in the blockbuster “Deadpool” movies.
“They call it direct address in theater, and Shakespeare was a master of it. He does it in all of his plays … and it’s wonderful that it’s still being celebrated in things like ‘Deadpool.’ But it is unique in some ways to theater, because can you imagine the difference between Ryan Reynolds doing that on screen and Ryan Reynolds doing that to you in person? Obviously, the fame associated with that has to be equated out, but imagine the electricity of an actor looking at you in the eyes and saying, ‘Share this moment with me,'” Woods said.
“In our modern theater, not a lot of plays do that. Not a lot of plays break the fourth wall. Not a lot of films break the fourth wall, frankly, and when they do, it’s something special and intentional.”
“Hamlet” also includes the famous “gravedigger scene,” where Hamlet takes up the skull of a long-dead jester, tells his friend Horatio, “Alas, poor Yorick! I knew him,” and ponders the inevitability of death. Murray acknowledged that taking up that skull and speaking so many familiar lines adds pressure to the already demanding role.
“I went into this knowing that in these scenes and soliloquies, someone in the audience is going to be mouthing it all alongside me. … We have some hardcore Shakespeare people up in here,” he said with a laugh.
“Whenever I see a challenge, I want to overcome it. I guess I want to be able to see my victory at the end, because I think if I can imagine my victory at the end, then the rest will eventually come. And that’s working so far.”
‘Hamlet’
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Publish date : 2024-09-10 08:37:00
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