The Tragedy of Machbet 2021

Fourteen years after his groundbreaking, nine-hour 'The Mahabharata,' Peter Brook returns to the Brooklyn Academy of Music's Harvey Theater with his version of Shakespeare's Hamlet. His 'The Tragedy of Hamlet' has been pared to a bare minimum. The stage contains only a large red carpet and a few cushions and the cast is cut to 13 characters played by just eight actors. The adaptation is surprising and demanding, a concentration he calls it, in which he has not changed a word but has radically cut and shifted lines and reduced the playing time to just over half the usual four-plus hours. His reading of the tragedy is as scrupulous as it is startling, not reductive but enriching and intensely moving..

A ruthlessly ambitious Scottish lord siezes the throne with the help of his scheming wife and a trio of witches.

A recording of Peter Brook’s "THE TRAGEDY OF HAMLET" performed the Bouffes du Nord Theatre in Paris with Adrian Lester in the title role.. A production of the work stripped of what Brook refers to as ‘the unessential’ to focus on the myth at the heart of the play. The production is simply staged on a rectangle of red-orange cloth with only a couple of benches and a scattering of multi-coloured cushions, accompanied by a haunting soundscape ranging from muffled bells to birds in flight. Speeches and scenes are reassigned and roles are frequently doubled or tripled.

Desdemona, daughter of a Venetian aristocrat, elopes with Moorish military hero Othello, to the great resentment of Othello's envious underling Iago. Alas, Iago knows Othello's weakness, and with chilling malice works on him with but too good effect…

"Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow" - but the bodies keep piling up today, from the opening battle, to the beheading of the traitor Cawdor, to the - onscreen - murder of Duncan, to the electrifying final duel to the death (at each clash of metal on metal, and flesh on stone wall, Polanski cut a single frame of film, making the impact almost palpable). His first work after the Manson massacre of his wife and friends…

"Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow" - but the bodies keep piling up today, from the opening battle, to the beheading of the traitor Cawdor, to the - onscreen - murder of Duncan, to the electrifying final duel to the death (at each clash of metal on metal, and flesh on stone wall, Polanski cut a single frame of film, making the impact almost palpable). His first work after the Manson massacre of his wife and friends…