Wittenburg

Running in rep with Hamlet comes a play about Hamlet's time in school at Wittenburg, before the events of Hamlet take place. His instruction comes from two teachers who actually might have been there around that time, Martin Luther and Dr. Faustus. Luther, a priest who is dissatisfied with the church and the giving of indulgences, teaches Hamlet about God's path while Dr. Faustus, a medical practitioner and devout questioner of all things biblical, tries to lead Hamlet down the path of skepticism and philosophy.

The play is absolutely littered with quotes and semi-quotes from Hamlet, all twisted for humorous effect. In a brilliant move, the only people who actually speak in Shakespearean dialect are people from Denmark. Everyone else talks normally and kind of puts up with Hamlet's weird way of talking. It also leads to some absolutely hilarious moments such as the tennis match between Hamlet and an offstage Laertes, who every time he loses a point shouts something along the lines of "Thou hast got to be kidding me!" or "'Swounds! 'Sblood! 'Snails!" and ending with "'Sballs!" (Shakespeare used 'S as a contraction of "God's" for those who don't know). Oh, and during it all, Hamlet is high, and Connor Toms who plays him is to be well commended for being able to mime almost perfectly hitting an invisible ball matched with a prerecorded sound cue.

But don't be mistaken in thinking this is all about Hamlet. In fact, it was rather obvious that while the overall structure of the play dealt with some overarching themes in Hamlet like purgatory (absent, as far as I could tell, in the other Hamlet oddly enough), the source of Hamlet's ambivalence and his fear of dreams, the real purpose of this show was to have the discussion between Luther and Faustus. Between God and not God essentially. And have no doubt, the author liked Faustus much more. Both present their cases equally well, but the character of Faustus was just so damn funny and likable, and he got all of the good jokes and scenes, that there was no question who the star of the show was.

Yet despite the bias there's some solid philosophy sitting under this play. Unfortunately it's the kind of philosophy that doesn't quite make sense in one sitting, but you get the sense that were you to study it you'd be blown away. And the nice thing about this play is that even if you don't necessarily understand the main point being delivered, there's plenty of funny bits to keep it entertaining. Some of the humor was surprisingly, and to its detriment, low brow (namely a poop joke that occupies the beginning of the play), but for the most part it all hits the mark, and the actors had wonderful comedic timing to make it work.

Overall Wittenburg was a play I enjoyed, though much more would rather sit down and read through and study to get the most out of it that I could. Watching it, it became fairly apparent that this was a new play, and needed some more editing to really make it great, but what's there is still a fun mash up of religion, philosophy, comedy, and Shakespeare.

Wittenburg gets an 8/10.