Jay Parks as Claudius and Adam Meredith as Hamlet

Culture Critic Donald Munro’s very positive review of ‘Hamlet’ is up at the Beehive

and so are the requisite disparate comments. Woodward Shakespeare Festival has found itself to be a lightning rod of theatrical discussion this season on Munro’s blogs. While WSF always bears in mind that the few people who comment online are only a small fraction of our audience, we do attempt to judge the merit of all feedback we get on productions and put them in a context for our company. So we encourage discussion from our audiences in any online arena. . . for public discourse on theatre can only help theatre as a whole. And we’re here to serve our community through the best theatre we know how to present.

From our own point of view, Woodward Shakespeare has worked extremely hard to improve the production values on ‘Hamlet’, truly feel that our actively involved talent has learned and grown under the very capable direction of Arlene Shulman, and is proud to have been able to give such challenging roles as Hamlet, Claudius, Gertrude, and Ophelia to actors who wish to tackle such megaliths. This is the direction we wish to take the festival: pushing our current perceived limitations, giving voice to perhaps unorthodox views of the texts, and taking a few reasonable risks.

And this show was a risk for us. Many people come through the doors not knowing what to expect from ‘Hamlet’. Will it be depressing? Hard to understand? Uninteresting? But the fact is that our Friday and Saturday night audiences were so fully engaged in the production that only a handful left at the second intermission and those who remained were INSPIRED to remain. They laughed at some of the most subtle of jokes, listened intensely, and rewarded the actors with a standing O. That tells me that we haven’t entirely missed the mark on this one. In fact, most indications are to the contrary.

We know that we cannot please every audience member that comes in the door and that some of those not-pleased people will ultimately find themselves commenting– often anonymously– on a blog somewhere. We absolutely respect their right to do so, and even encourage the public discourse. However, WE reserve the right to dismiss criticism we find less than useful, specific, objective, or seems to be more about creating derision than in improving our offerings.

In fact, to anyone who wishes for better shows from us, we give an open invite to become involved (or re-involved) with the festival and create a real investment in our growth.