Hamlet / Kline, New York Shakespeare Festival (Broadway Theatre Archive)

Starring:Leo Burmester, Bill Camp, Reg E. Cathey, Joseph M. Costa, Michael Cumpsty, MacIntyre Dixon, Clement Fowler, Phillip Goodwin, Larry Green (II), Dana Ivey, Peter Francis James, Erik Knutsen, Tanny McDonald, Robert Murch, Brian Murray, Don Reilly, Rene Rivera, Josef Sommer, Diane Venora
Studio: Image Entertainment
Product Type: DVD

Amazon.com

Kevin Kline directs and stars in this first-rate production of Shakespeare's most famous play. Originally produced by Joseph Papp for the New York Shakespeare Festival, this version was adapted by Kline and television director Kirk Browning for PBS. While one occasionally longs for the live audience reaction, the television production does offer the advantage of seeing Hamlet with close-ups. The design is beautiful, with sets full of dark, gloomy halls and characters in elegant modern dress. Kline's interpretation of Hamlet is an enjoyably accessible one; he never lets melancholy obscure Hamlet's wit. Veteran stage actress Dana Ivey is an excellent Gertrude, pliable without ever straying over into idiocy. This production is equally enjoyable as an introduction to Hamlet or as a fresh interpretation for those long familiar with the tale. --Ali Davis

Description

With a daring and depth few of his American contemporaries seem prepared to match, Kevin Kline stars in and directs Hamlet for the New York Shakespeare Festival. Now with the felicitous addition of Kirk Browning as co-director, he has brought his indelible Hamlet to television where, as The New York Times stated, "It is eloquent, moving and at times thrilling. The shrewdly edited version uses tight close-ups and captures small crowd scenes without a sense of confinement. The teleplay flows with commendable grace from beginning to end, all urged on by Kline's intelligent interpretation."

Customer Reviews:

Kline is famous but not the best.......2007-03-28

The production is well organized and well filmed and generally well acted, but I find Kline's Hamlet slow & indulgent, technically tearful but ultimately unconnected. Get your hands on Derek Jacobi's for some real excitement.

I've Waited For This For Over 10 Years.......2006-08-07

As it says in my profile, I love almost everything Shakespearian. I saw this production on PBS's Great Performances, back in 1990, & I've been looking for it in some form ever since. So when I found it on DVD at Amazon.com I leaped at it.

Hamlet (Kevin Kline) Prince of Denmark, returns home when his father is killed. There he learns that his ambitious uncle has married the widdowed Queen & claimed Hamlet's throne for himself. Haunted by his father's ghost & his own need for revenge, Hamlet's torment leads to the most inspired poetry in all of Shakespeare.

I loved the modern dress & that there are some African-American cast members.

The only problem I find with the DVD is that there are no real special features. They give you a filmography of the cast, but that's it.

But the play is brilliant! Well worth the price!

Mixed Matter.......2005-09-23

I have mixed feelings about this Hamlet; there are some things about it I emphatically do not like, and others I emphatically do like.

I DO like the fashion in which is was cut. Rozencrantz & Guildenstern, for instance, were kept in, as well as Fortinbras. There are important scenes and stories with both so I was glad to see them there.

I also like Kevin Kline's Hamlet. At first I thought I wouldn't, because in his first scene ("little more than kin & less than kind"), he didn't seem bitter enough to my taste. I also though that, as an actor, Kline sometimes over did the crying. But as he eased into the role and I grew used to it, I began to like his interpretation. He was very good at personifying Hamlet's merry but oh so bitter madness.

Everyone else was, I thought, well cast, which the exception of Ophelia. How lamentable, especially when her brother was so well played! Apparently she was trying to give a new interpretation of an Ophelia more wayward and rebellious than usual...but Shakespeare wrote Ophelia, and he made her gentle,not wild (until that madness sets in and that's for contrast); timid, not self-assured. "I will the effect of this good lesson keep" was spoken with sarcasm! Sarcasm to Laertes from Ophelia? What is the point in life? Admirably, however, Laertes and Hamlet both played their scenes with her excellently in spite of her shortcomings. There was a LOT of physical action during Hamlet's scenes both with his mother & Ophelia; a bit more than I'm used to, but it seems to be Kline's strong point.

I have to admit that modern dress in Shakespeare always gets under my skin. Why are they in post-victorian dress and speaking in "thees & thous"? The grandeur of Elizabethan costume that so sweeps the audience in is not good enough for them? But this Hamlet was very well performed, and though the clothing still clashes with its historical context, I had forgotten about it fifteen minutes into the play.

Oh, dear, I'm giving this four stars. I'm just so in love with Hamlet I can't nitpick such a good production apart. This is excellent, maybe not for a first viewing (and I only say that because of Ophelia), but a definite should-see.

From the Broadway theater archive.......2004-05-13

William Shakespeare's Hamlet directed and starring Kevin Kline.

We have seen this play many times, sometimes abridged, and many adoptions by various artists and groups, such as Sir Laurence Oliver, Richard Burton, Dame Judith Anderson, Nicol Williamson, Richard Chamberlain, Derek Jacobi, Campbell Scott, Mel Gibson, even (icky poo) Ethan Hawke. Each brings a unique plus that makes it hard to say which is best. And threatened to be played by Shelley Long in "Outrageous Fortune"

That said Kevin Kline is top notch. One attribute is that this version seemingly uncut is spoken clear. Maybe because it is a stage version filmed close enough that they did not have to shout.

When Kevin builds up in the close-up you forget all the trivial things like Hamlets age. And you actually feel that you are there.

Prince Hamlet loses his father the king. It is unnerving to him that his mother should marry his uncle so soon that the funeral baked meat set the wedding table. Then comes the shocker. His father's ghost suggested that the uncle and wife did him in while asleep. How will hamlet handle this news and what consequence will it have on the people around him?

A fine and personal (not political) Hamlet.......2004-02-27

No filmed version of "Hamlet" is entirely satisfying. The play is too rich to be reduced to a single definitive interpretation. But Kevin Kline's production of the more accessible of Shakespeare's two greatest tragedies ("King Lear" is equally great but sparer and more difficult) is one of the better versions available. Hamlet may be the most intelligent and verbally-skilled character ever written, and sometimes the wit and depth of his lines can obscure the real tragedy of his situation. Kline plays the character as deeply sad as well as intelligent. His reading of the "To be or not to be" soliloquy, for example, is masterful: we witness someone who is not just considering suicide as an intellectual puzzle, but is despairing enough to be seriously considering it. This is a human and emotional Hamlet, in contrast to Branagh's (who even in the worst straits seems almost to be enjoying himself), Gibson's (alternately frightened and enraged), Williamson (existentially disgusted), or Olivier's (weak and indecisive, and in my opinion the only indefensible choice here).

Kline has some wonderful bits of "business," too: tearing the page out of the book and sticking it on Polonius's forehead, pointing to the book after Polonius hears him say "tedious old fools" as if he is merely reading, clasping Rosencrantz and Guildenstern's heads to his chest once he has decided he cannot trust them -- all very clever. (However, the scene where he dangles Ophelia like a puppet is a bit overdone.) Laertes cutting Hamlet on the hand during a break is a good choice too (Laertes should not be able to lay a glove on Hamlet without cheating). On the other hand, Kline's version of Hamlet's feigned madness seems quieter than the "antic disposition" the character claims he will "put on."

The rest of the cast is not as strong, unfortunately. Josef Summer captures Polonius's egotism and foolishness, but we get no sense of the cunning that has made him a power at court. Diana Venora plays Ophelia with a little too much self-awareness and resignation for her mad scene to be believable when it arrives. Dana Ivey is a fine Gertrude, but the role is not one of the play's strengths. Worst of all, Brian Murray hardly registers as Claudius, who can be played as purely evil, as tormented by guilt, as a decadent drunkard, or even as a reluctant murderer, but here is a puffed non-entity.

Most productions of "Hamlet" make cuts, and Kline's choice is to remove all the politics. An actor is listed playing Fortinbras, but I cannot remember him (though it has been a few months since I have watched this version). We neither see nor hear much about him, which robs the play of some of its power: Hamlet, Fortinbras, and Laertes are three men in the same position; their differing responses -- respectively that of the Renaissance philosopher and poet, the modern military man, and the hothead -- provide one of the most basic themes of the play.

But "Hamlet" is not merely a personal or family play; it is also a play about nations, about the damage a ruler of bad character does to a country's reputation. As the gravedigger tells us, Hamlet was born the day his father slew the elder Fortinbras; Hamlet's life exactly spans the period of Denmark's ascendancy over Norway. In a sense, he is born to remedy a cosmic error. All of that is gone (as are other more minor but still missed elements such as the character of Reynaldo, and some of the comments on acting and the theatre). Fortunately, Kline rejects any facile Freudianism, such as we see in the Gibson/Zeffireli version.

The staging is simple. About the most you can say of it is that neither it nor the costumes distract us from the acting. The lighting, however, is quite elegant, and the camera work intimate without causing claustrophobia.

Overall and despite its flaws, Kline's "Hamlet" remains a skillful and moving effort, ennobled by the actor's sensitive and thoughtful portrayal of literature's first and greatest modern man.

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