«Ghosts of Shakespeare» /Playing Hopscotch № 3/
Based on the famous play
Performance presents a short history of the tragedy by W. Shakespeare «Hamlet» told by child and a monologue of the prince Hamlet «To be, or not to be».
Performers: Vasilisa Kutuzova, Yuliya Bogdanovich, Mariya Galkina, Ekaterina Melnikova, Ziliya Kanchurina, Yana Mordashko, Yury Ageniy, Konstantin Taranov
Director — Anatoly Ledukhovsky
Project support — Sergey Barkhin, Dmitry Rodionov
Sound director — Dmitry Basin
/with the participation of the Scenography Faculty students of the Russian Institute for Theatre Arts (GITIS)/
Spectacle was performed on festivals in Germany and China in 2008
Duration: 1 hour without an interval
Press about the spectacle:
Anatoly Ledukhovsky put on a plastic fantasy on the topics of «Hamlet» that may be understandable even for those who don’t know this tragedy by Shakespeare. Story of Prince of Denmark looks like a disturbing mysterious tale-dream: there are a shivery silhouette of Ophelia, whose immense bridal veil transforms to the river, immovable mask of Hamlet and grotesque images of Gertrude and Claudius… Production changes usual senses and liberate them from unnecessary layers.
Elena Gubaydullina for the magazine PSYCHOLOGIES № 35
In this performance there are no characters. The famous Shakespeare’s drama «Hamlet» is performed here by shadows – all the characters appear as a bright light spots in the darkness of stage, where absolutely new and amazing associations with the plot born. Performances by Anatoly Ledukhovsky can’t be fully described. However, everyone has difficulties while telling about performances by Dmitry Krymov, who creates his productions with the help of art methods or even from nothing. Certainly, there is no sense to compare these two talented directors. Everyone has his own language of communication with an audience. Director Ledukhovsky dips an audience in the complete darkness, where various images born. His productions are like dreams. From emptiness, from nothing, scenes from Shakespeare’s plots appear in associations as if from distant past.
Anna Kovaeva, Livejournal
«Ghosts of Shakespeare» is a short, but very capacious and clear performance. Sad, heartfelt, beautiful. Declaration of love to the theatre represented by the man, whose name became a synonym of the theatre. Meditation under the theme of the only one plotline Hamlet-Ophelia, pronounced by a child, sometimes «with his own words», but opening several secrets of the Theatre life. The repetition itself is spectral, made in the artificial eternity of theatre, where skull of poor Yorick always rises from dust, Ophelia always drowns floating in dark water as a giant water lily, young-old Hamlet always pronounces into darkness his monologue, grave diggers always bustle on the sides of the hardly enlightened stage. Fragile, ephemeral life of these creatures is infinitely sorrowful and vulnerable. And this feeling of vulnerability, fragility of existence – that’s what is left after the performance.
