0 Page 8-The Michigan Daily - Friday, September 29, 1989 Slings and arrows of intensity Two Hamlets and technology combine in Hamletmachine BY JAY PEKALA AMID the enormous scaffolding and fencing gridwork which sur- rounds the stage and seats of the Trueblood Theater, performers appear as parasites in a desolate urbanism. Hamletmachine begins as actors hurl themselves at a chainlink fence standing directly before the audience. The whole play is viewed through this fence - perhaps a comfort to spectators that they will not be sucked unwillingly into the macabre festivities. In a burst of aggression, the eight actors run toward us and thrust themselves onto the fence as if to collectively topple the barri- cade. Act one commences, and the next 90 minutes are a collage of im- pressions centering on the 20th cen- tury's conflict of thought and action, highlighting the struggle between the sexes. University Productions opens its season with a grotesquely beautiful and provocative vision of East German playwright Heiner Muller's Hamletmachine. Muller describes his play as a "self-critique of the in- tellectual," as well as a post- Communist rethinking of the Hamlet character. Within its mere six pages are found many Daliesque images - a woman dangling from a rope, a blood-oozing refrigerator, a Madonna with breast cancer - all of which director Arnold Aronson and his designers and actors have strik- ingly captured. In many ways, Hamletmachine is an elaboration of Shakespeare; so many images lead us to reconsider issues of Shakespeare's original work. In Aronson's play, Polonius impales himself on a sword stuck out from behind the plastic arras, Hamlet kisses his mother tenderly on the lips and then mimes the sex act over her prostrate body, Hamlet wears Ophelia's dress and makeup and then follows Horatio's lead in waltzing around the stage. Each im- age raises an interpretation that may have gone unnoticed in viewing the melancholy Dane. Director Aronson provides two Hamlets: a classic one with dark hair and thin beard wearing a gold- trimmed black doublet, and a modern one with hanging reddish curls in a loose black shirt imprinted with a large gold pattern. Both Hamlets are eloquently played by Ken Weitzman and Jon Casson respectively, yet both inten- tionally do little more than passion- ately emote. Their sweat-streaked words are more show than tell. By the fourth act, Casson's lengthy monologue and costume change into jeans nearly go unnoticed as he stands atop a freight elevator at the back of the stage. More interesting are the three television screens perched on the scaffolding; they show scenes of revolution and "daily nausea" as well as a live video image of the audience shot by an actor car- rying a video camera. In contrast to the Hamlets, Ophelia - whose entrance is marked by actors kicking doors open to let cold air sweep through the theater - is a woman of action. Bela Peixoto portrays Ophelia as a tormented, an- gry figure, her heart represented by an alarm clock hung on the fence and amplified by a microphone. The ominous ticking and rush of cold air stand as preludes to Ophelia's "madness." Pouring a chalice over her head and smearing the red over her white dress, hanging from the fence as she crawls across it, remov- ing her clothes in an eerie, unerotic striptease for Hamlet - all these Mao, Marx, and Lenin turn up Hamletmachine, a post-modern rendition of images have more impact than any- Shakespeare's Oedipal opus. Blame it on class conflict. thing Hamlet does. Ophelia epito- feminist themes over the socialist help to hold the piece together even, mizes social change in her very be- ones." though they may not know the. ing, and it is she who is bound at In directing the production, source." In sculpting his impression. the end of the play, made inactive. Arnold Aronson wanted to construct istic play, Aronson has drawn unique Implications in the final image of images that would in turn evoke and often daring performances froma two men in lab coats wrapping a other images. He said, "The play has his actors. With the able assistance shouting Ophelia vividly aid to work subconsciously. The audi- of choreographer Chris Goetsch, seta, Aronson's intent to "emphasize the ence will recognize quotations which SeeMACINE. nee 9 0 RESERVE OFFICERS' TRAINING CORPS 6 Being a Marine Corps Officer can open the door to opportunities Juniors train in one ten-week summer session and earn you may have thought were beyond your reach. 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