Fight Clip Club: Hamlet

…for there is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.

Back in 1996, I had just freshly graduated with a BFA in acting (along with my BA in English), and was active not only in the Colorado Shakespeare Festival, but a regular sword fighter for the Colorado Renaissance Faire (some shenanigans of which I recount here and also here), and a company member in Frequent Flyers aerial dance company. As such, I also liked to get gigs as much as I could in random ways. One of them was walking up and down the historic Pearl Street Mall in Boulder, dressed as Mary Rippon, chatting with shoppers about the history of the place, it celebrating its hundred-and-somethingth anniversary. Another, was as PR for said Shakespeare Fest—my job was to dress up in full velvet Renaissance finery (ostensibly as Ophelia) and work the crowd for the opening of Kenneth Branagh’s much-anticipated, uncut, 4-hour Hamlet, at an art house cinema somewhere in Denver. 

I sat for four hours in that corseted monstrosity, without an intermission, so excited as an actor and a Shakespeare nerd to have a new Branaghian Shakespeare masterpiece in the world, and me the first of my friends to get to see it. I mean, Mel Gibson’s Hamlet a few years earlier was okay, if a bit disappointing, but now Branagh himself was going to tackle it! And just look at that cast! Derek Jacobi! Billy Crystal as the Gravedigger! Even my beloved Cyrano, Gerard Depardieu, had a small role. And, okay, maybe Robin Williams was sort of stunt casting, but who cares! It was destined to be brilliant, a classic, right? It had to be.

Right?