Heigh ho, the wind and the rain

Hamlet encounters his father's ghost on the castle walls while a cold wind batters the audience with rain right on cue, and we feel in the bleak dark dampness that something is rotten in the state of Denmark.

This time, though, it's real wind, real rain, real bleak dark dampness. Our theater department's production of Hamlet took place outdoors under the trees between two brick buildings, one serving as backdrop and castle. We sat huddled on folding chairs, clutching blankets close around our cold bodies and putting up our hoods when the rain came. Last week I asked a theater professor what would happen if it rained during a performance. "The play will go on," he said. "That's the risk you take with environmental theater."

The play did go on--and very well indeed. Players projected their voices above the rushing wind and in the end the bodies hugged the ground as if unaware of the cold and damp. Corpselike, in fact. Then we in the audience, cold and stiff, rose and dispersed to our warm homes, carrying in our cold bodies the memory of the bleak dark dampness of Hamlet's Denmark.