Theater Thursday
Feb. 15th, 2024 08:55 pmI recently hit a bit of a book slump, so I ended up reading a couple of plays instead: Osamu Dazai's A New Hamlet (1941) and Thornton Wilder's Our Town (1938). (Although, technically, I think A New Hamlet is a novel written in the form of a script...? But if it waddles and quacks, at what point is it no longer a duck?)
A New Hamlet was... interesting? It is, as the title suggests, an adaptation of Hamlet, although "remix" might be a more apt description. The first couple of scenes are more or less a direct "modern" translation of Hamlet's Act I, Scene 2 and 3— I pulled up the original online, for a line-by-line comparison— although, actually, it's twice translated: from its original Shakespearean English to mid-20th century Japanese, and then from Japanese to English circa the 2010s. Owen Cooney's translation is an interesting blend of sounding natural as contemporary English, having a certain cadence(?) where it's more obvious that it was translated from a different language, and - mostly in Ophelia's case - intentionally anachronistic, even Shakespearean, phrasing.
After that, ( the plot is different. )
Our Town is technically a re-read; I'd studied it in 9th grade English, but to be honest, it hadn't left a particularly strong impression on me at the time.* What made it interesting, this time, was that the edition I borrowed had a bunch of "bonus content" about the play's history, inspirations (surprisingly, classical Greek and Chinese theater?), and Wilder's writing process, including changes that were made between drafts— e.g., in an early draft, young George Gibbs had political ambitions, but this was cut for not being in line with Wilder's goal of "an allegorical representation of all life." There was also apparently some behind-the-scenes drama between Wilder and Our Town's original director, Jed Harris; a list of changes Wilder demanded to Harris' direction boiled down to "stop changing the lines" and "everyone's acting should be like 60% less weepily sentimental."
( Footnote )
A New Hamlet was... interesting? It is, as the title suggests, an adaptation of Hamlet, although "remix" might be a more apt description. The first couple of scenes are more or less a direct "modern" translation of Hamlet's Act I, Scene 2 and 3— I pulled up the original online, for a line-by-line comparison— although, actually, it's twice translated: from its original Shakespearean English to mid-20th century Japanese, and then from Japanese to English circa the 2010s. Owen Cooney's translation is an interesting blend of sounding natural as contemporary English, having a certain cadence(?) where it's more obvious that it was translated from a different language, and - mostly in Ophelia's case - intentionally anachronistic, even Shakespearean, phrasing.
After that, ( the plot is different. )
Our Town is technically a re-read; I'd studied it in 9th grade English, but to be honest, it hadn't left a particularly strong impression on me at the time.* What made it interesting, this time, was that the edition I borrowed had a bunch of "bonus content" about the play's history, inspirations (surprisingly, classical Greek and Chinese theater?), and Wilder's writing process, including changes that were made between drafts— e.g., in an early draft, young George Gibbs had political ambitions, but this was cut for not being in line with Wilder's goal of "an allegorical representation of all life." There was also apparently some behind-the-scenes drama between Wilder and Our Town's original director, Jed Harris; a list of changes Wilder demanded to Harris' direction boiled down to "stop changing the lines" and "everyone's acting should be like 60% less weepily sentimental."
( Footnote )