Watched Laurence Olivier’s Hamlet a couple of nights ago.

One play I adored in high school and college (and should reread) is Tom Stoppard’s Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead (an excellent summary with links is here), so I found it a bit disconcerting when I figured out that my boys R&G wouldn’t be in the Olivier version. (I should mention that I was a lady-in-waiting for a production of R&G during my first semester in college. I know this play quite well; also, the Tom Stoppard movie? It sucked. See it onstage, not onscreen.)

After all, one of the many things Hamlet concerns is betrayal.

Read much more geeking out after the jump (which link says "read more" or "more" and is after all of the tags down there, so sorry, we are fixing soon) ...

Claudius, of course, betrays King Hamlet, not to mention the entire state of Denmark, with the murder; he betrays Gertrude by seeming to comfort her for the death of the husband he murdered; he betrays Hamlet in too many ways to count, but let me enumerate a few: asking R&G to keep watch over him and ferry him to England, asking the King of England to kill Hamlet, getting Laertes to agree to kill Hamlet with a poisoned sword, putting the poison in the drink (these are betrayals of Laertes, and, as it turns out, Gertrude, too). In Hamlet’s view, Gertrude betrays her husband and Hamlet’s father by marrying Claudius; she essentially betrays Hamlet by letting Polonius hide behind the arras; she returns to herself only by removing herself from the situation, trying to save Hamlet’s life by drinking the poisoned wine. Laertes betrays his own honor and pays dearly for it.

And Hamlet? He betrays his father by not following through immediately on the information he’s given; he betrays Ophelia most greviously (and with the worst consequences); he betrays his friends who would have betrayed him (more on that in a second); he betrays his country by failing in his mission and then dying before he can be king (his kingship Olivier emphasizes; he dies, quite literally, on the throne).

So why leave out Rosencrantz and Guildenstern? They provide one more example of betrayal: Hamlet is their dear friend, but the gold of Claudius’ tainted coffers (and perhaps their belief in the divinity of royalty?) causes them to obey Claudius over their love for Hamlet.

Yet the production is streamlined and perhaps the better for it (though I do also quite like Branagh’s full-length, no-cut 1996 Hamlet). I enjoyed seeing several of the same actors from Olivier’s Henry V in this 1948 movie.

I don’t like and don’t agree with the Freudian interpretation of Hamlet and Gertrude; unfortunately, the Olivier movie does rather emphasize this, with Gertrude (the amazing Eileen Herlie, way too young to be Olivier’s mom; she plays Gertrude again in a 1964 version with Richard Burton, which now I’m going to have to track down) kissing Hamlet full on the lips several times. Squick. Now, I’m not saying Hamlet didn’t have some Oedipal stuff going on, but I don’t think Gertrude did. Also: quandary for actors. Hamlet can't really be very old (at the oldest, perhaps he could maybe with a lot of stretching be 30), yet it's a challenging role, requiring someone mature. Hence the problems with the older Olivier and the older Kevin Kline and the ridiculous Mel Gibson (how I loathe that man).

Back to R&G Are Dead, by way of another play: A couple of months ago, I went to the Very Little Theatre's production of Lee Blessing's Fortinbras, which captivated me at two general times (the acting was otherwise too broad; but more on that in other reviews): One, when Blessing's script commented on all of the scholarship on Hamlet (often to hilarious effect) and two, when the death scenes were recreated.

Fact is, Hamlet is magnetic, and the language is just so brilliant. So brilliant that it overwhelms Blessing (though I have to give him props for the amazing scene in which Hamlet has Laertes pretend to be him, standing behind the praying Claudius, killing him over and over — the psychology of that scene was hugely satisfying). But Stoppard is so quick, so light, so smart, so deeply intelligent and so good with the language that Shakespeare does not overwhelm the action and the language in R&G.

Next weekend: Chuck and I go to Ashland's Oregon Shakespeare Festival and see all of the plays except Romeo and Juliet, which I've already seen. Cannot wait. It's like a Shakespeare's Greatest Hits Lite (that is, no tragedies, no histories, which of course saddens me): Taming of the Shrew, As You Like It, The Tempest. (And Stoppard's On the Razzle, August Wilson's Gem of the Ocean, Lisa Loomer's Distracted, William Saroyan (and a lot of other people)'s Tracy's Tiger and finally, woot, Moliere's Tartuffe. We'll bring back souvenirs and reviews.