Hamlet,a clown prince

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It’s common knowledge that had William Shakespeare been alive, he would never have prescribed his plays for either a school or a varsity syllabus. Rather, he would have waited with bated breath to gauge the inquisitive students and learned academics’ response to his comedies and tragedies, solely meant for enactment and public entertainment on stage. But how would the globally celebrated iconic bard and dramatist from the Elizabethan era react to his Hamlet being presented as a clown prince instead of a vindictive tragic hero in the eponymous drama! Well, call it a literary hijack or what you may, the generic premise of the proposed piece undergoes a 360 degree transformation and assumes a comic vein to bemuse the discerning spectators, especially the die-hard Shakespearean adherents. And that’s exactly what the reputed actor-director and diligent stage personality Rajat Kapoor has done with his wacky stage rendition, re-christened as Hamlet — The Clown Prince. The tagline reads Thy enjoyment is our delight. And the showcased play does live up to its claim expectedly.
Seemingly irreverent to many but critically acclaimed by a confined niche of patrons and enthusiasts, the piece was recently staged at Kolkata’s famous G.D. Birla Sabhaghar auditorium, with two shows on consecutive days. Though the act was partly mouthed in English and part gibberish, yet the audience found it highly amusing and cathartic enough to drain out its pent-up emotions. The house was packed to the hilt and the theatre buffs were unfazedly rolling in continuous splits for those liberal bouts of hilarious humour being frequently cracked up on stage. From eye-grabbing gestures, stylised movements, parti-coloured pied costumes, gawky and flexible body lingos to voice modulations, chants, songs, jigs, dialogues, expressions, use of props, impromptu interactivity — the stage portrayal spun in a judicious mix of madness and matter-of-factness with proficient panache. And yes, sometimes insanity does scale beyond sanity to appeal to our sensibilities. The plotline digs up a twist in the tale, thus unfurling a hotchpotch sequence manifested with a bunch of clowns who in their bid to put up a show of the Shakespearean Hamlet tends to go haywire with the given text. “Well, you may suggest it as a foiled attempt at a joint venture, because the crests and troughs that the clowns have to trudge on their way to realise this uphill task is almost sweat-sheddingly cumbersome, frustratingly impossible and apparently ridiculous. But that’s where the fun lies. In their concerted efforts, they sometimes misinterpret the text, sometimes find new meanings, expounds Kapoor elaborately.