A Thousand Natural Shocks

A time-bending quartet inspired by Hamlet and other visions of the end of the world.

The king is dead and Hamlet and Laertes are called home from their spoiled college lives to find Denmark in chaos – and Ophelia in a blonde wig working at the airport tourist bureau. Horatio records everything, all the while pushing Hamlet to be the leader his country needs.

The four youths are rocketed back and forth through time and space: preparations for the king’s funeral collide with boxing matches, crash into a wild-eyed Ophelia commanding a million Danish teens to drown themselves in Poland Spring while Laertes blossoms into an aspiring neocon. All the while Hamlet, paralyzed and ironic at the center, struggles to figure out how to take his place in history.

Billy Joel wails “We Didn’t Start the Fire” at the funeral in this rock concert deconstruction of Shakespeare’s Hamlet for Generation X. This project was shorlisted for the Best New Writing Award, Edinburgh Fringe 2005.