Guild Hall Players, an award-winning Wichita theatre, is presenting Shakespeare’s HAMLET March 19-22. The production adapted by Joseph Urick of WSU and directed by Dr. Phil Speary emphasizes the mystery, intrigue, and suspense of this captivating tale of haunting, murder, and revenge. Preserving Shakespeare’s masterful language while paring down the action to a little more than two hours, this production will be accessible and very entertaining for your students. Featuring veteran professional Shakespearean actors, Joseph Urick from WSU as Hamlet and Mark Mannette from Newman as Claudius, the cast of 16 local actors will fulfill the Bard’s “purpose of playing, whose end, both at the first and now, was and is, to hold, as ‘twere, the mirror up to nature.”
Performances are 8 pm Thursday March 19 through Saturday March 21 and 7 pm on Sunday March 22 at 3750 E Douglas. Regular admission is $12 with students and Military $10.
First performed 425 years ago, HAMLET is the Bard of Avon’s most frequently produced tragedy. It is reasonable to consider the drama as the first “modern” play with its psychologically conflicted title character. Because of its thematic and philosophical complexity, more has been written about this work than any other play in theatre history.
Despite all that scholarly consideration, ultimately and most importantly, HAMLET is a great, thoroughly engaging entertainment. It has everything you would want to find in a film or television drama - intriguing mystery, treacherous deception, witty dialogue, and ghosts, murder, and revenge. It is Shakespeare’s most quotable play: “Something is rotten in the state of Denmark”; “to thine own self be true”; “neither a borrower nor a lender be”; “what a piece of work is a man”; “there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in your philosophy”. The list could go on and on.
In this evening’s adept streamlined adaptation by Joseph Urick, you will experience all the expert storytelling, masterful characterization, and theatrical enjoyment that Shakespeare’s masterpiece affords.
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