Playwright: Andy Grigg
At: New Millennium Theatre Company,
At the National Pastime Theatre, 4139 N. Broadway
Contact: ( 773 ) 989-4515; $15-$10 students with ID
Runs through: Sept. 24
BY CATEY SULLIVAN
I know, I know—Hamlet's big soliloquy is a near perfect thing; profound, poetic, near-sacred, blahblahblah. But here's the thing: Some days, I just don't give a rat's ass about the splendor and complexity of great art, much less some melodramatic teenage royal getting all to-be-or-not-to-be over his own adolescent issues. Ninja Hamlet works well on those kinds of days.
Here's the title character's soliloquy in Ninja Hamlet: Burning Fist of Denmark: 'Life's stupid sometimes. Maybe I should just kill myself. I dunno. This is hard.'
Dude, way to cut right to the chase.
Ninja Hamlet joins a street Othello and two whole families o' fleshing eating zombies in Shakesploitation: The Remount, written and directed for the New Millennium Theatre Company by Andy Grigg.
In a berserk 90 minutes, we get Grand Theft Othello, Romeo & Juliet: Apocalypse and Ninja Hamlet: Burning Fist of Denmark. Don't look for subtlety or subtext. This show is as over-the top and realistic as Liza Minelli's wedding ( only intentionally, with a smaller budget and without the oddly waxed eyebrows. )
In Grand Theft Othello, Leldon Omar De La Cruz plays the O-Man as a shorter, rounder and much dumber version of Richard Roundtree. ( Roundtree was the original Shaft, for you youngsters out there. ) This is blaxploitation at its stupidest and loudest ( 'I'm gonna take yo' ass down. Down to Chinatown.' ) , with a bit of fine Jesse Jackson mockery thrown in for good measure ( 'There's no hope in dope.' ) .
Next up is Apocalypse, the shortest and the weakest of the evening's offerings. Given the premise—that R & J turned Verona into Night of the Living Dead after they supposedly died forever—I felt I deserved to see a lot more gore. All the flesh eating was off stage, which totally sucked, because hey, it's a tragedy—and what's more tragic than a zombie biting off chunks of your flesh?
Ninja Hamlet: Burning Fist of Denmark closes out the evening, although the title had me thinking off and on about its homoerotic implications for the whole show. As in Shakespeare's 'Hamlet' ( SPOILER ALERT! ) everyone in Ninja Hamlet winds up dead, except for a fairly obscure character who comes in at the end and talks all nobly about how all the rest is silence, or some such thing. But before everybody gets killed, there's lots of swordplay and also dialogue that sounds like bad dubbing.
On the whole, Shakesploitation is noisy, trashy, disrespectful and idiotic. I loved it.