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tional response from the audience, particularly that of danger, pain or pending doom, and is wholly essential in his telling of this tragedy. So, why is Hamlet giving his dramatic "to be or not to be" monologue, wea-

ring a shirt made out of paper, disintegrating from the water, dripping from the heat from the candles, melting from the chunks of ice, dangling from the chandelier that the ghost hung under the saw-blade above the stage? In a nutshell, Hamlet is genuinely troubled-and merely translating the English text of this scene into Lithuanian words to flesh out the appropriate emotion would never meet Shakespearean protocol; additional visual measures were positively in order-and thus employed. One of the more curious methods Nekrosius uses is the sum of illicit abuse brought to his characters onstage. This concept is taken so far to the extreme that most often it is unclear who the director is abusing, the character or the actor himself. The director's theory behind this is that acting must be difficult. If it is not, then anyone can do it. And if anyone can do it, then far too much talent is being wasted. These are the grounds for why Nekrosius' stage is relentlessly active and flowing. Someone is always lifting or moving some prop or person at any given moment. It is generally only the focal character that gets a transitory break from one physical or mental demanding labor or another, so as to retain more energy for their ephemeral moment in the spotlight, where they most often get a more bona fide abuse. The scene where the distraught Hamlet's pants are at his ankles for what seems far too long and far too demeaning is an attention-grabbing example. The idea perhaps behind this humiliation, and other abuses for our hero, is that if the audience sympathizes with him, they then in turn connect with him, thus presenting him as the protagonist-and thereby justifying his cause. Ingenious actually. But whatever questions remain of the play itself, no one leaving the theatre can legitimately deny the performances of the cast. What comes to mind is the scene where Hamlet rebukes his befuddled mother (Dalia Storyk) for being indifferent and selfish to his mental distress. The upshot of emotions stirred by Mamontovas' and Storyk's astonishing discourse is both poignant and disturbing. The magic behind their performances, aside from first-rate acting, is that the audience is given insight to Gertrude's maternal unease, which of course her son is oblivious to (or perhaps he simply could care less about), and throughout it all, Hamlet remains so fully justified in his rage. One of the more endearing characters in the play is our romantic lead, the meager Ophelia, eloquently portrayed by Viktorija Kuodyte. Kuodyte develops the state of Ophelia's lunacy to an unqualified extreme and then jumps. And who could ever dismiss Vytautas Rumsas as Claudius, arguably one of the more powerfully represented characters in the play, convincingly loathsome and despicable just as he should be-and then some? But all of the actors in this group are highly skilled and by a long way professional, each leaving their own unique and lasting impression, bringing both drama, passion and a good deal of humor to their audience. On the whole, no one will likely deny that this adaptation takes in anything but mouthfuls of poetic license. Perhaps even the word "adaptation" should be rethought a bit. The show is more of an artistic synthesis between two languages and cultures, many a generation and two or more imaginative perspectives. Consider rather Shakespeare's Hamlet as the skeletal framework of Nekrosius' individual creation, rather than the essence and body itself. Consider Shakespeare the foundation from which Nekrosius builds his own castle. So if you are being introduced to Hamlet for the first time with this showing, be warned, you will get more than you bargained for, and on many different levels. If, on the other hand, you know the tale well enough, and are culturally and artistically open to new, innovative and dramatic outlooks into the psyche of Shakespearian characters, then surely this performance will be a weighty and memorable experience that you will not too soon stop talking about. In the end, it can truly be said that no one, but no one, does Shakespeare quite like Eimuntas Nekrosius. Jeff Cook