![]() It will go down as one of the most beautiful books I've ever read, but I dare not reread it for fear of reliving the trauma I felt the first time around. In Maggie O'Farrel's HAMNET, she examines the death of Shakespeare's favorite son in a time of plague. This fetus overhears the plot to kill his father, with his uncle (Claude) in cahoots. In NUTSHELL by Ian McEwan, the British author paid tribute to the Bard by putting wondrous original speeches written with a Shakespearean flair in the mouth of a babe yet to be born to a mother (Trudy, a modern Gertrude). ![]() Here are two I got to read during lockdown. While HAMLET is best appreciated as a play watched live, it has inspired other literary works as well. Who would Hamlet be today, but the aloof kid in the black hoodie who sits far at the back of class, headphones on despite Teacher's lecturing, trying to put on a brave face while healing from the mental and emotional anguish of two years of the pandemic? I was lucky enough to catch their recently concluded production a few weeks ago, featuring a Shakespearean script given a new frame by Filipino Shakespeare authority Jaime del Mundo. In the youthful hands of director Nelsito Gomez's students from MINTeatro, the uncertainty and the existential angst that we all relate to came out in full force. But the polish and confidence, while attractive, do not speak about the fatal flaw inside this corrupted soul, split apart by murder, and planning another. ![]() They were brilliant performances, to be sure, and dazzled female audience members not just because of their magnetism and prowess.
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