Details

When the son of the Danish king returns home from university for his father s funeral, he discovers not only that his father is rumoured to have been murdered, but that the chief suspect, his uncle, now sits upon the throne. A vision of his dead father appears to him, demanding that he avenge this murder. Shocked, grief-stricken, the young man hesitates... and instead, sets in train a series of events that lead inexorably to madness, death and the end of an entire political dynasty. Two years after the original 1601 production of Hamlet, some of Shakespeare s own actors published a version now known as The First Quarto. Not the revered, four-and-a-half hour epic we are familiar with today, but something half its length, fresh, fast, accessible, full of changed, half-remembered lines, differently named characters - and missing some of the most famous soliloquies in theatre history... Possibly a version used for touring, this text uses only those elements of the longer play which Shakespeare’s actors thought worked best – which is why we’ve called it The Actors’ Cut. Using an inventive, stripped-down staging, this rare production of The First Quarto of Hamlet will celebrate the return of Shakespeare to the Festival Theatre for the first time since 1983.

Creatives/Company

Producer: Pitlochry Festival Theatre