The Tragedy of Hamlet: Prince of Skidmark. Canberra Theatre Centre and Sydney Theatre Company. Created by Declan Greene, Richard Higgins & Matt Kelly. Directed by Declan Greene. Composer and sound designer Jed Palmer. For ages five and up. August 3 at 6.30pm, August 4 at 10.30am and 2.30pm. Tickets $40. canberratheatrecentre.com.au or 62752700.
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For their next show, the duo of Richard Higgins and Matt Kelly, collectively known as the Listies, have taken on one of the great works of Western literature. Together with director Declan Greene, they've adapted The Tragedy of Hamlet, coming up with their own version, The Tragedy of Hamlet. Prince of Skidmark.
So why does a children's entertainment duo - joined for this show by a third performer, Courtney Stewart - decide to tackle one of William Shakespeare's best-known works?
Kelly says, "It's a sad show – we just like to tell people how it's a tragedy. Everybody dies."
So, given the change of title, does this really tell the story of the melancholy Dane?
"Yes. it really does - Hamlet is in it, Ophelia is in it ... I read sections of the Folios and watched just about every production on film. The worst was the terrible one with Ethan Hawke ... The best was the National Theatre Live staging with Benedict Cumberbatch. It's got the full four hours and I loved it and thought it was amazing."
But despite all this diligence, they've taken a few liberties. The play has been cut back from four hours to one: the character of Horatio is among the sacrifices made. More significantly, Hamlet does not, as a rule, feature zombies. Or vomit. Or ninjas. Or aliens. And that's not all.
"Gertrude is played by somebody in the audience, and Donald Trump makes an appearance."
You get the idea. Here's the set-up: Higgins and Kelly have been hired by the Canberra Theatre Centre to be ushers for a very serious and correct production of Hamlet.
"But the cast of the show accidentally got food poisoning. It's not the Black Plague, it's the Brown Plague, from eating a 400-year-old cheese which they bought from ALDI."
So it's time for the Listies to step up. aided by Stewart.
"Together the three of us do Hamlet in our own way."
And the result isn't quite your grandparents' Hamlet. Or your parents'. Or, most likely, yours. But as The Listies argue, the original Hamlet is full of things kids enjoy – ghosts, castles, sword fights, bodily fluids and spooky goings on – and they've just added a few bits and pieces, among them gags and magic tricks. And, Kelly implies, somewhat blasphemously, they've made improvements.
"Our Ophelia comes back from the dead as a zombie and takes over Skidmark - that's a spoiler alert," he says.
"In the real play, Ophelia didn't get a very good part... [we] did a rewrite to the end of it and gave Ophelia a better part."
There's a climactic battle to the death on Planet Nunnery 5000 years into the future and a million light years away.
"It's exactly the way Shakespeare ended Hamlet as far as I know.
"I fell asleep."
More seriously, he says, plays like Hamlet don't just exist as canonical works and the Listies don't want kids to be intimidated by Shakespeare (for many, this will be their first encounter with a play of his, more or less) or theatre in general.
This the fourth time the Listies have performed in the Canberra region. Kelly and Higgins met while performing in stage adaptations of Andy Griffiths' books and decided to strike out on their own. They have been together as a duo for nearly 10 years.
"Probably nine - I don't know. We've been going for 1000 years, nearly 2000 years. We're both 900 years old in dog years."
The rest, as Hamlet said, is silence.
