This is Hamlet
2010: Greg Watkins

Set in the format of a television news and interview show, this purports to represent and deal with the characters of the play as if they were real people. They are brought on and asked their opinions about various things. Interstitial materials include music videos and advertisements for various Shakespearean items. A few scenes are played out in the original language. The host is Ralph Holinshed (the author of the Chronicles that figure prominently among Shakespeare’s sources), and one of the interviewing reporters is Sarah Siddons (named for the famous Shakespeare actress of the nineteenth century).

Clearly aimed at a high-school audience reared with a cultivated attention deficit, since it’s cut into pieces that are seldom much longer than ten minutes, this nevertheless offers over two hours of material that is in fact still fairly illuminating, and it reveals, by some fairly deft humor, some of the easier-to-overlook pieces of the play. Some sexual implications may be unsuitable for younger students.

Buy This is Hamlet from Amazon.