Victor and I went to see Please Continue (Hamlet) yesterday at the Museum of Contemporary Art stage. The show was presented as part of the Chicago Humanities Festival, of which we are big fans. It consists of the trial of someone named Hamlet, for the knife murder of someone called Polonius, the father of a young woman named Ophelia, Hamlet's former girlfriend, and witnessed by Hamlet's mother, who is named Gertrude.
While this all feels familiar, these characters live in a rough neighborhood on the South Side of Chicago, in our own time, where rats run rampant in public housing, it is natural for a young man to carry a knife for defense, and before his return at the death of his father (Hamlet Sr.), young Hamlet had been away in Georgia with his uncles, trying to get his life straight, free of the challenges and distractions of ghetto life.
The trial is conducted with an actual Chicago-area judge, prosecutor, defense attorney, medical examiner, co-counsel, and court clerk. The jury is randomly selected from the audience. Each performance makes use of a different set of legal profesionals; however, the defendant (Hamlet) and key witnesses (Ophelia, Gertrude) are portrayed by actors.
The entire show can exceed three hours, but it is remarkably gripping. While most of us are familiar with the bare bones of Hamlet's story, the details of what he's accused of here, and how the prosecution and defense build their cases, are fascinating. Certainly the possibility of being chosen for the jury also compels the attention. Audience members are provided with memo pads and pencils to take notes.
In Chicago, Hamlet was charged with two counts of first-degree murder. Intent to kill or grievously harm was cited as key to the charges. While those of us familiar with Shakespeare's play know that Hamlet didn't intend to kill Polonius, he did intend to kill his uncle Claudius, who he thought was hiding behind a curtain while he argued with his mother. In this play, though, Hamlet and his mother claim they heard a rat scurrying behind the curtain; Hamlet, quick as thought, stabbed his knife where he thought the rat was and was shocked to realize he'd struck Polonius.
Then followed a day of coverup, before the police got involved and were first lied to and then confessed to.
We saw the last performance of this production in Chicago; it was first performed on Thursday night, when State's Attorney Kim Foxx represented the prosecution.
Before seeing the performance yesterday, I breezed through Chris Jones' review in the Chicago Tribune. From this I learned that Kim Foxx had not stayed beyond her opening statement, and that the colleague she left behind was not able to get a conviction. According to Jones, this was quite rare ("he'd hardly ever gotten off before"), which enabled Jones to contribute to the mythology of a Chicago where victims can't get justice, and where Kim Foxx lets criminals slide. The headline reads "...Kim Foxx lets Hamlet beat a murder rap."
The truth is that around half of the Please Continue (Hamlet) trials end in acquittal. Among the trials with guilty verdicts there have been a wide range of results, including alternate charges (in Chicago Saturday night, Hamlet was convicted of manslaughter), and sentences of less than a year to more than 15 years.
Part of the point of this production, actually, is to convey the arbitrariness of the legal system--how the performances of the various parties in the case (witnesses, attorneys, judges, and juries) critically influence the outcome, so that the fate of the defendant is not so much about the facts as we like to think.
Chris Jones apparently missed this point. He was too busy trying to ding Kim Foxx and contribute to the meme of Chicago corruption and impunity. And also to put his two cents in about the prosecution's failure to note that a rat is not as tall as a man.
Regardless, I was delighted that the jury quickly acquitted Hamlet yesterday afternoon (even though our prosecutor repeatedly brought up the rat/human size discrepancy). The question was not whether Hamlet's rat story was believable, but whether the prosecution had proved its case beyond a reasonable doubt. And (in our opinion) it had not: Ophelia was the only witness presenting damning evidence against Hamlet and she was not convincing.
Anyhow, I was grateful for a piece from the Guardian that usefully discusses the show.
Please Continue (Hamlet) was created by the European theatermakers Cie Yan Duyvendak and Roger Bernat and has appeared at theaters and festivals around the world in the past few years. Kudos to MCA Chicago for bringing the production here.
While this all feels familiar, these characters live in a rough neighborhood on the South Side of Chicago, in our own time, where rats run rampant in public housing, it is natural for a young man to carry a knife for defense, and before his return at the death of his father (Hamlet Sr.), young Hamlet had been away in Georgia with his uncles, trying to get his life straight, free of the challenges and distractions of ghetto life.
The trial is conducted with an actual Chicago-area judge, prosecutor, defense attorney, medical examiner, co-counsel, and court clerk. The jury is randomly selected from the audience. Each performance makes use of a different set of legal profesionals; however, the defendant (Hamlet) and key witnesses (Ophelia, Gertrude) are portrayed by actors.
The entire show can exceed three hours, but it is remarkably gripping. While most of us are familiar with the bare bones of Hamlet's story, the details of what he's accused of here, and how the prosecution and defense build their cases, are fascinating. Certainly the possibility of being chosen for the jury also compels the attention. Audience members are provided with memo pads and pencils to take notes.
In Chicago, Hamlet was charged with two counts of first-degree murder. Intent to kill or grievously harm was cited as key to the charges. While those of us familiar with Shakespeare's play know that Hamlet didn't intend to kill Polonius, he did intend to kill his uncle Claudius, who he thought was hiding behind a curtain while he argued with his mother. In this play, though, Hamlet and his mother claim they heard a rat scurrying behind the curtain; Hamlet, quick as thought, stabbed his knife where he thought the rat was and was shocked to realize he'd struck Polonius.
Then followed a day of coverup, before the police got involved and were first lied to and then confessed to.
We saw the last performance of this production in Chicago; it was first performed on Thursday night, when State's Attorney Kim Foxx represented the prosecution.
Before seeing the performance yesterday, I breezed through Chris Jones' review in the Chicago Tribune. From this I learned that Kim Foxx had not stayed beyond her opening statement, and that the colleague she left behind was not able to get a conviction. According to Jones, this was quite rare ("he'd hardly ever gotten off before"), which enabled Jones to contribute to the mythology of a Chicago where victims can't get justice, and where Kim Foxx lets criminals slide. The headline reads "...Kim Foxx lets Hamlet beat a murder rap."
The truth is that around half of the Please Continue (Hamlet) trials end in acquittal. Among the trials with guilty verdicts there have been a wide range of results, including alternate charges (in Chicago Saturday night, Hamlet was convicted of manslaughter), and sentences of less than a year to more than 15 years.
Part of the point of this production, actually, is to convey the arbitrariness of the legal system--how the performances of the various parties in the case (witnesses, attorneys, judges, and juries) critically influence the outcome, so that the fate of the defendant is not so much about the facts as we like to think.
Chris Jones apparently missed this point. He was too busy trying to ding Kim Foxx and contribute to the meme of Chicago corruption and impunity. And also to put his two cents in about the prosecution's failure to note that a rat is not as tall as a man.
Regardless, I was delighted that the jury quickly acquitted Hamlet yesterday afternoon (even though our prosecutor repeatedly brought up the rat/human size discrepancy). The question was not whether Hamlet's rat story was believable, but whether the prosecution had proved its case beyond a reasonable doubt. And (in our opinion) it had not: Ophelia was the only witness presenting damning evidence against Hamlet and she was not convincing.
Anyhow, I was grateful for a piece from the Guardian that usefully discusses the show.
Please Continue (Hamlet) was created by the European theatermakers Cie Yan Duyvendak and Roger Bernat and has appeared at theaters and festivals around the world in the past few years. Kudos to MCA Chicago for bringing the production here.
