Hamlet

When the troupe of travelling actors turns up at Elsinore, Hamlet tells them he likes plays "set down with as much modesty as cunning." He, and other people who prefer art that doesn't show its workings, wouldn't like the Wooster Group. The cunning outweighs the modesty in this production, more séance than staging, a study of how each new Hamlet carries the charge of all those that came before. 

The Wooster Group, a celebrated crew of New York hipsters, re-enact Richard Burton's 1964 film version with breathtaking precision. As the old footage plays behind them (snatches of other cinema Hamlets also crop up occasionally), the actors mimic the movements and intonation of their dead counterparts, whose voices and faces have been edited from the footage for long stretches. As Scott Shepherd's Hamlet gives his soliloquy on death, Burton's face fades into view, as though the camera has captured one of the ghosts that live in this text. 

There's plenty of gleeful postmodern grandstanding. Shakespeare retains enough of an aura to allow a thrill of illicit excitement when Shepherd breaks character to announce that we'll be skipping a few of the duller scenes, but other tricks seem glib. Chopping up the video so that the cast has to jerk about distractingly in order to follow the fractured movements of the actors on film gets a few laughs, but this seems like a cheap shot, undermining the 1964 production and slightly trivialising this odd project, which is at heart an original and extremely accomplished attempt to present a great play in a new light.