Attention- Matthew Westwood\/ Rosemary Sorensen
\nReviews Editor, The Australian
\nSeptember 18.
\nAdelaide<\/p>\n
OzAsia Festival
\nAdelaide Festival Centre
\nSeptember 17- October 2.
\nBookings : BASS 131 246<\/p>\n
Hamlet
\nBy William Shakespeare
\nYohangza Theatre Company
\nSpace Theatre, Adelaide Festival Centre
\nSeptember 16.<\/p>\n
Dialogue in Skin
\nHands Percussion
\nHer Majesty\u2019s Theatre
\nSeptember 17.<\/p>\n
Now in its fourth year, the Adelaide Festival Centre\u2019s OzAsia Festival, this time, has a focus on Korea. And the first weekend has opened auspiciously with the Yohangza Theatre Company\u2019s production of Hamlet<\/em>. Directed by \u00a0Jung-Ung Yang, this fresh and inventive interpretation, like the company\u2019s previous version of A Midsummer Night\u2019s Dream<\/em>, draws on traditional Korean mysticism and shamanism to reinterpret a familiar work through an intercultural perspective.<\/p>\n Just as the dark mischief of Oberon\u2019s fairies found startling connections in Korean sorcery in the Dream, <\/em>so <\/em>the disturbed and haunted kingdom of Denmark also suits such parallels. Performed in Korean with English surtitles the text is a sprightly blend of Shakespeare and plain declaration. Hamlet\u2019s \u201c How weary, stale, flat and unprofitable\/ Seem to me all the uses of this world\u201d becomes : \u201cwhy do we grunt and sweat under a weary life.\u201d But, when looking to the young mop-haired Hamlet (the excellent Jung-Yong Jeon) in his white silk tunic, we recognize, that in either version, these are the exaggerated words of an unworldly dilettante.<\/p>\n We see Hamlet in his various guises \u2013 bitter to his mother, derisory of his uncle Claudius (compellingly played by Hae-Kyun Cheong), feigning madness to a managerial-looking Polonius (Jin-Gon Kim) and flippantly cruel to a convincingly heartbroken Ophelia (Seung-Hae Nam).<\/p>\n The performances, on a large sisal mat with accompanying flute and drum musicians, are accomplished and psychologically vivid, but what gives this production even greater impact are the three Shamanic \u201cgut\u201d\u00a0 ceremonies to settle and purify unquiet spirits \u2013 the first for the ghost of Hamlet\u2019s father, then later the ill-fated Ophelia and, finally, after a splendidly stylized fatal duel with Laertes, the voyage of Hamlet\u2019s spirit through the beckoning hands of those many in the play whose deaths have preceded him.\u00a0 It brings a ceremony to the tragedy which Western theatre usually registers only as chaos and mayhem. In this deftly adapted, chamber version, the Yohangza Company reminds us that, with Hamlet, the play is still the thing.<\/p>\n Also in the weekend\u2019s festival, directed by Goh Seang Heong , the Malaysian Hands Percussion company presented Dialogue in Skin,<\/em> a hyperkinetic program of Chinese \u201ctaiko-style\u201d drumming by a troupe of ten highly choreographed young performers. Despite the impressive efforts of stage leader, Chin Chun Ket,\u00a0 the colourful routines\u00a0 began to prove repetitive. The inclusion of gamelan instruments and briefly, a sitar, provided welcome variation later in the program but, the energetic zeal of the company, notwithstanding, this dialogue of skin remained a limited conversation.<\/p>\n Murray Bramwell<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Attention- Matthew Westwood\/ Rosemary Sorensen Reviews Editor, The Australian September 18. Adelaide OzAsia Festival Adelaide Festival Centre September 17- October 2. Bookings : BASS 131 246 Hamlet By William Shakespeare Yohangza Theatre Company Space Theatre, Adelaide Festival Centre September 16. Dialogue in Skin Hands Percussion Her Majesty\u2019s Theatre September 17. Now in its fourth year, the Adelaide Festival Centre\u2019s OzAsia Festival, this time, has a focus on Korea. And the first weekend has opened auspiciously with the Yohangza Theatre Company\u2019s […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1647","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-7","category-archive"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/murraybramwell.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1647","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/murraybramwell.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/murraybramwell.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/murraybramwell.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/murraybramwell.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1647"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/murraybramwell.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1647\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1677,"href":"https:\/\/murraybramwell.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1647\/revisions\/1677"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/murraybramwell.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1647"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/murraybramwell.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1647"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/murraybramwell.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1647"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}