Date: Sun, 24 Feb 2002 11:10:55 EST
Subject: PUPT: Hamlet comin' up


please note our new site name!:
www.czechmarionettes.org    

our official e-mai address is now:
czechmarionettes-AT-aol.com)

Please, join us for a small party after the opening night March 1 (maximum 
legal occupancy 238)

William Shakespeare's 
HAMLET 
Protagonists are literally puppets of destiny in this marionette
version with music.

March 1 to 17
Thursdays through Saturdays at 7:30 pm; Sundays at 5:00 pm
Jan Hus Playhouse, 351 E 74th Street between 1st & 2nd Avenues
$17 adults, $10 children
Ticketing: SMARTTIX (212) 206-1515   www.smarttix.com 
Runs 90 minutes

Directed by Vít Horejš
Songs by Ben Seessel
Set Design by Roman Hladík     
Costumes by Magdalena Vaváková
Performed by Deborah Beshaw, Charley Hayward, Vít Horejš, Theresa Linnihan
Keyboards John Bowen 

To share its 1997 hit with a larger audience, Czechoslovak-American 
Marionette Theater will revive its distinctive
production of "Hamlet" (1997) from March 1 to 17 at Jan Hus Playhouse,
351 East 74th Street.   In its debut year, the production earned
accolades at The Vineyard 26 Theatre and Karagoz International Festival
in Bursa, Turkey, but it has not since been performed in New York.  It
features a cast of four actors and scores of marionettes and stages the
play's famous soliloquies as musical songs.

    The 1997 jewel box production introduced hundreds of New Yorkers to
Czech puppetry, inspired a Time Magazine article, and filled the
Vineyard's 26th Street Theatre with audiences of all ages.  At the time,
Czechoslovak-American Marionette Theater was regarded as a "rising star"
theater company; but its ingenuity and conceptual skill were not as
widely recognized as they were after "Golem" was produced by the 1998
Jim Henson International Festival of Puppet Theater and "Rusalka, the
Little Rivermaid" (1999) filled La MaMa's large Annex Theater for both
its opening run and return engagement.   


In establishing the guilt of his stepfather in his fathers murder, Hamlet 
finds his madness to be both a plight and a ploy.  This production magnifies 
Hamlets dilemma by prominently featuring live interactive puppeteers as alter 
egos to the wooded actors, as if to ask the question: who is pulling the 
strings of Hamlets destiny.

This "Hamlet" draws upon Shakespeare's text, and a popular Czech puppet 
version published in Prague for a toy puppet theatre in its heyday, the 
1920s. With twelve 26-inch puppets, four live actors and 50 toy marionettes 
in crowd scenes.  Shakespeare's eternal soliloquies are set to music.  At 
times, the music drives the action and puppet movement is choreographed like 
a dance.  At other times, music is layered over the
puppets' and puppeteers' action. 

The New York Times (Anita Gates) praised the 1997 production's
inventiveness, but saved special praise for the leading man/puppeteer,
writing "Charley Hayward is a strong Hamlet, making his character
unlikeable but sexy, a sort of William Hurt type with a John Lennon
sharpness."

Critics were evenly divided on whether this puppet tragedy was actually
child-friendly, with its grown-up mix of live action and puppets, its
sexually-mature relationship between Claudius and Gertrude, and such
brainy jokes as Rosenkranz and Guidenstern being played by one puppet
with two heads, cap-a-pie.  Czechoslovak American Marionette Theater is
dis-inclined to ever talk down to young audiences, and officially
recommends the production for "ages 8 to 108."



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