‘Gertrude_ the Cry,’ a ‘Hamlet’ Rewrite, At Atlantic Stage 2 - NYTimes
2
http://nyti.ms/1kA3Qbb THEATER| THEA TER REVIEW Oh, Mama! That Queen of Denmark Takes OverBy ALEXIS SOLOSKI JULY 17, 2014 Hamlet is indecisive. His mother, however, is a lot more resolute. In the first scene of Howard Barker’s “Gertrude: The Cry,” the American premiere of this 2002 play by PTP/NYC at Atlantic Stage 2, she orders Claudius to “kill my husband.” Then she strips naked and demands sex from him astride her husband’s corpse. “Gertrude,” a radical rewrite of “Hamlet,” is the 10th work by Mr. Barker that PTP/NYC has staged. A British playwright with an uncompromising and often violent aesthetic, Mr. Barker writes provoking epics that explore politics, sexuality and power. Here he’s used “Hamlet” as a rough template, discarding much of the plot and most of the secondary characters, while inventing his own. Pamela J. Gray’s Gertrude is joined not only by Claudius (a fervent Robert Emmet Lunney) and a moralizing Hamlet (a nicely priggish David Barlow), but also by a mother-in-law (Kathryn Kates), a loyal servant (Alex Draper) and a dashing, panty-sniffing suitor (Bill Army). There’s also an infant daughter, pla yed quite unconvi ncingly by a bundle of c loth. You won’t miss Ophelia or Fortinbras, beca use Mr. Barker has recalibrated the play as a study of sexual obsession between Gertrude and Claudius. That titular cry? Her orgasm. In a note on the play, Mr. Barker casts himself as feminist knight, rescuing Gertrude from the margins of Shakespeare’s play and placing her
‘Gertrude_ the Cry,’ a ‘Hamlet’ Rewrite, At Atlantic Stage 2 - NYTimes
