#edit btw i finished it and overall I did in fact like it! not perfect but defintiely fun

[beatcroc]

i watched one episode of death note and this show is soooo funny for opening on skull demon guys and youre like oh shit its the evil freaks and then theyre just like chilling playing cards. and then you meet your mild mannered middle schooler boy protag and hes like i want to kill everyone forever

[just-like-playing-tag]

A totally self indulgent compilation of my favorite works on this blog of the year June 13, 2019 - June 13, 2020

I wanted to do this for the blog's first anniversary but then completely forgot about it lol.

The following lists are all in chronological order according to the date each post was first published.

Top 10 panel edits:

#1: Don and Gilda - Chapter 138: Demon serch (1)

Date: Jun 14th, 2019

Time: ~ 1:30 h

My very first redraw from my very first edit posted here, so it deserves an honorable mention. Back then I was young and inexperienced, I didn't even apply a gray filter (lmao I was so unskilled I even unintentionally scratched the picture, I hadn't realized until today). I'm actually very happy my first redraw was of Don, boy deserves all the love.

#2: Emma and Ray - Chapter 140: I’m Here!

Date: Jun 28th, 2019

Time: ~ 1 h

Back then this looked like so much work to me!!! And to this day, I think it turned out pretty well. I'm particularly proud of how the bow turned out. This is one I was really proud of right after having finished it; it gave me the confidence to try redrawing bigger areas. Also, the edit were I first applied the opacity of layer / opacity of brush for the gray filter that would have stuck with me.

#3: Krone's birthday edit

Date: Jul 15th, 2019

Time: 15 mins

I don't know I just really like how Krone's hair vanish to a more sketch-like style here– and consequently, how I managed to replicate such effect. I think Krone's beautiful.

#4: Emma, Norman and Ray - Chapter 153: Coward

Date: Oct 4th, 2019

Time: 4:07 h (and 67 layers lmao)

Probably the single panel redraw I'm the most proud of. That Norman panel was beautiful and very poignant at the end of a chapter I adored, so I believe it deserved all the time I've spent working on it. It's far from being perfect - the back of his head is too plain, and the difference between my brushes and the original brushes is pretty visible - but I still like it very much and am extremely attached to it. The horn looks kinda big but I honestly believe it to be more of an issue with the original than with what I had redrawn lol. Funny enough, the whole picture didn't make it to the final edit and had to be trimmed.

#5: Full Score Trio - Chapter 154: A Breakthrough

Date: Oct 11th, 2019

Time: 29 mins

I don't have a particular reason for this I just think Emma's hair turned out amazing. It took just half an hour and I didn't even use references like. Wow. @Redrawing skills where did you go please come back

#6: Mujika and Queen Legravalima - Chapter 158: The Reason I Was Born

Date: Nov 17th, 2019

Time: 2:09 h

Sis I love this so freaking much. The shift from redrawing almost exclusively people and clothes to redrawing this mess was so fun and refreshing. Even though it's a mess I think it turned out very clean and overall it looks beautiful? I remember after finishing this I felt so powerful, like now that I had redrawn this thing I would have been able to redraw anything I set my mind on lol.

#7: Emma - Chapter 161: Never Be Alone

Date: Dec 13th, 2019

Time: 57 mins

Again no particular reason except this is a very cute Emma and I think the redraw turned out pretty well. There's this big lock on the left that doesn't make a lot of sense but overall I really like it. Cute Emma is cute, and I love her determination.

#8: Emma - Chapter 166: Going Back Home

Date: Mar 9th, 2020

Time: 3:45 h

I'M SO FREAKING PROUD OF THAT RIFFLE I have not the slightlest idea why this took so damn long BUT I'M SO PROUD OF IT

#9: Norman's birthday edit

Date: Mar 21st, 2020

Time: 1:04 h

This is cool! I didn't know I could manage to draw this, but I did it! The feathers were particularly hard to clean but I think they turned out fine.

#10: Full Score Trio - Chapter 174: A New World (part 1)

Date: Apr 6th, 2020

Time: 2:11 h

I just think they're very pretty? I can't understand if I like Ray's face a lot, or not at all, but I think overall there was a lot to redraw and it turned out pretty cute! Sorry Gillian.

(Also insert pretty much every panel from the chapter 177 Isabella edit– I've spent so many hours on basically every panel there's no way I could choose only one).

Top 5 edits as whole:

#1: Emma and Ray - Chapter 140: I’m Here!

Date: Jun 29th, 2019

Complessive time: 2:57+ h

The very first edit I'm actually proud of; I'm really attached to it. It's the first edit I had put all of my effort into, and I remember feeling anxious people would have left it without notes. It kinda feels weird to think about it now, because I really don't care about notes anymore; yet, it somehow makes me happy to think that past-me wasn't let down. Thank you @neverlandstrio for your support, you may not remember but it really meant a lot to me back then! And it still makes me smile. You're the best!!!!!!

#2: Mujika and Queen Legravalima - Chapter 158: The Reason I Was Born

Date: Nov 20th, 2019

Complessive time: 7:12+ hours

This whole edit was an hella wild ride. It's midnight before a school day, when I think: "Mh, it's been a while since I last made an edit, why not make one about Musica and the queen from the last chapter?" And seven hours after this was born. I'm particularly proud of the queen's redraws on the 3rd, 7th and 9th picture (ofc), the areas which have been redrawn are pretty huge yet I think the difference with the original is almost impossible to notice?? @Redrawing skills where did you go please come back (part 2)

#3: Emma - Chapter 174: A New World (part 1)

Date: Apr 12th, 2020

Complessive time: 6:53+ h

I think the panels that were selected work very well together, especially considering the close-up / full body alternation. I love Emma, and I've always been kinda sad noticing that edits that focus one her take the less notes... She deserves all the love. Also, fun fact: for the last but one panel, I had redrawn Emma's whole left ear before remembering she doesn't have one, so I had to redraw the panel from the start. Besides from the error with the ear, the reason why this (and all the others after) took so long is because official panel take way longer to clean.

#4: Isabella and her children - Chapter 177: Mother

Date: May 22nd, 2020

Complessive time: 13:41+ h (ahah.)

Lmao tbh I can't understand how this has so few notes it's like. Technically speaking, probably the best edit I've ever done. I don't even like Isabella that much, I haven't got the slightlest idea why I decided to spend so many hours on this. Anyway, I find the composition (full body on the left / headshots on the right) really good looking in this as well! And I think the redraws turned out fine, especially Isabella's.

#5: The Promised Neverland manga ending countdown→ 1/7 chapters: chapter 1 - Grace Field House

Date: Jun 9th, 2020

Complessive time: 1:59+ h

I don't know how I came up with that idea for the composition but I find it really beautiful??? I think it does a pretty good job conveying the sudden, terrific shift of atmosphere from the first chapter, and I think that sharp bridge is very nice. I'm very, very proud of this.

Honorable mention #1: Full Score Trio - Chapter 154: A Breakthrough

Date: Oct 13th, 2019

Complessive time: 3:44+ h (+ 1:13 h of working on a panel that ultimately didn't make it to the final edit)

A very good chapter, and the edit turned out surprisingly amazing??? All the redraws look great and make it almost impossible to distinguish them from the original; honestly I feel like I'll never be able to redraw so neatly again lol.

Honorable mention #2: Don and Gilda (+ Norman) - Chapter 160: Shackles

Date: Dec 11th, 2019

Complessive time: 3:14+ h

That one is really one of my favorite scenes; I'm telling you peoples, Gilda and Don are a blessing to the earth. I think I've never mentioned it, but Gilda's hair is a nightmare to redraw??? More specifically, it takes me h o u r s to fill the texture without making it look too weird, it's the worst.

Honorable mention #3: Norman and Ray - Chapter 179: Compensation

Date: Jun 6th, 2020

Complessive time: 4:16+ h

I was so glad to finally be able to make a Norman / Ray edit, and it turned out it was just in time before the series' finale. I like how it turned out and I'm pretty satisfied with the redraws (even though my sister helped me with the lineart of some panels - it was exams time and I really couldn't afford to spend more time on it), too bad we didn't have more chapters that focused on the boys. Ray sweetie one day I'll fix your ear it's just today's not that day.

Btw, I justed realized I have never done an Emma / Norman centered edit? I'll have to make one eventually. I remember considering focusing on them alone for the chapter 154 one, but then I thought "even if the manga is gonna ignore Ray, I will chose to do not" lol.

Top 5 long posts:

#1: Reconstruction of how the Grace Field children were settled in the three bedrooms

Date: Aug 28th, 2019

I just had really a lot of fun doing it. I love putting all the little things to their own place, it's so calming to do and that's why I love making this kind of things. Also, loved how @temporoom contributed to the post! It was so nice of them to add what they had noticed to come up with more exact conclusions, that's one of the things I love the most about the internet.

#2: A study of how many times the characters of The Promised Neverland call each other through the first season of the anime

Date: Sep 10th, 2019

I REALLY LOVE IT! I mean it *was* kinda stressing to note everything, but it was very also very satisfying to see everything methodically divided and organized! And it's not just that– it's also the fact that it looks good. That's one post I have fun rereading because it's actually pretty! Also, even though it can be very stressing to learn to use new programs and sites, it's always very satisfying to look at the final result. Again, I really adore compiling these tiny little details! I would love to make more posts of that kind if i had the time.

#3: The Promised Neverland musicals headcanons

Date: Oct 27th, 2019

I mean it's literally. Putting my two favorite fandoms together how could I not love it. This is another one I really enjoy rereading, I find all the musical / character associations so fitting! I really want to make a second part, I hope to find some time to do it.

#4: Considerations on the reward / eventual series' finales (and Emma's sacrifice)

Date: May 7th, 2020

It's always nice to put down all your thoughts regarding a particular matter. It can take a lot of time (at least for me it does because... I need time to think about things), but it's so satisfying to see all of them there once you're done. Bonus points when, like in this case, it was something asked by someone else because “Wow! Somebody wants to hear my opinion on this subject! I'm flattered (◍•ᴗ•◍)”

#5: Some other considerations on the series' finale and Emma sacrificing herself

Date: Jun 13th, 2020

Pretty much the same as above. It's like some kind of clarity when the post is done and signed. Another fun fact, I had to censore the post a lot; the first version was extremely sharp and harsh, but I believe it's right to express your opinions calmly and politely.

Bonus: A thread of what the tpn characters would wear at the Oscars

Date: Feb 9th, 2020

Imagining all the children in those pretty dresses makes me so incredibly happy (╥﹏╥) I go back to look at that post a lot. I really love red carpets, I love looking at pretty dresses!!!!!

Lmao it's so funny how the post of mine I like the most are also the ones with the less notes

Anyway this was just a personal report! You don't have to read it all (or any of it actually). But it was indeed fun making it! Here's to many more months in the fandom!!!

[wickymicky]

my top ten favorite kpop singles of 2021 so far: first quarter edition (january-march)

10. Pixy - Wings: I’m not as into this song as other people, but it’s grown on me, and I think they have a lot of potential. I did not expect a group called “Pixy” to have this dark of a concept haha, I like that. I like the choreo and overall performance of it too, I think that’s the highlight for me

9. G Idle - Hwaa: Not my favorite G Idle title track, but I do think it’s in the top half. It’s interesting to me that they did this song, since it is pretty much all in Korean, there’s no English whatsoever (the only English is a “yeah” at the beginning haha), which for a group like G Idle who has used a lot of English in the past and is very popular internationally is kind of a bold choice, and I’m into it

8. Ateez - Fireworks (I’m The One): I’m still not fully sold on Ateez’s direction post-Wonderland/Answer, with the “end” of their pirate concept (possibly, it seems complicated lol, idk, but you know what I mean anyway), but I do kinda like this song! It sounds kinda like... European lmao. Like I keep thinking I hear accordion in the drop, but idk maybe I’m just imagining things. I mean all that in a good way, btw. Like a good kind of European (if you can imagine such a thing)

7. Shinee - Don’t Call Me: As someone who only got into kpop in 2019, and didn’t even get into a single boy group for like 6 or 7 months (and even then, for a while I just had one single token boy group lol), Shinee isn’t a group that I had checked out much from until fairly recently. I’m still new here, I suppose lol. But yeah idk, this song is good! I love the production and their obvious charisma and talent. Like, I can tell even just from this song that their reputation is earned. It’s just a solid release

6. Purple Kiss - Ponzona: I do prefer Skip Skip, but I decided to limit this to singles and title tracks. I also prefer My Heart Skip a Beat (by a lot, actually), but that came out last year lol. This song has really been growing on me a lot though! Like, a lot actually. I like the violin, I think that’s a really interesting touch haha, I feel like that adds so much to the way the song sounds overall. Yuki’s rapping is impressive too, I like her flow in every song I’ve heard her in so far, especially since she writes her raps herself and Korean isn’t her native language. Honestly that’s one of the most impressive things about Purple Kiss... they seem to be involved in writing all of the things they do! That’s SO RARE for a group to do right from debut, especially for a girl group! I think that’s a great sign that things are changing, and girl groups are being taken more seriously and being allowed more creative freedom than ever before. Ponzona was literally a song written for a monthly evaluation when they were trainees. That’s really impressive. Skip Skip was too, but yeah lol. 

5. Pentagon - Do or Not: I mentioned that for a while I just had one token boy group that I liked, and that was Pentagon haha, they were my first. I like that this is a return to their fun sound, but in a different way... like, this song doesn’t sound anything like Shine or Naughty Boy lol. Pentagon are just really good at conveying passion in their songs and I think that shines through here too! I like the way the bass and percussion sound, that’s just quality mixing lol. I also love that even though it’s this kinda pop-punk-ish-doo-wop-ish kpop song, it still has a bit of sadness underneath the fun, which is something I think is a trademark of Pentagon’s style haha. But mostly, it’s fun

4. Tri.Be - Doom Doom Ta: The main reason I checked this out was because it was written and produced by LE from EXID, and you can really tell haha. In fact, her voice is in the song at certain points, and like... she has a really distinctive voice lol. Anyway this song is like a pretty hard commitment to this Latin/moombahton kind of sound, and I’m not entirely sure how I feel about that trend in kpop, but either way, I do think this song is a bop. I’ve had it on repeat way more than everything below this point, in fact all the songs in this top 4 I’ve had on repeat like an order of magnitude more than the songs from 5-10 lol. it’s been a slow beginning to the year. I don’t have a lot of specifics to mention here about Doom Doom Ta, I just think it’s an earworm 

3. Weeekly - After School: This was really highly anticipated for me, because I love their previous title tracks. Tag Me especially is a song I consider to be almost perfect, which is not something I say about very many songs at all haha. I personally don’t think After School is quite as good as Tag Me or Zig Zag, but I do really like it! It’s always good to get more fun, exciting, unashamedly catchy songs haha, it’s a breath of fresh air. I love this concept for them too, I think it fits them really well! They’re just a lot of fun. This mini-album, We Play, is my favorite of theirs so far too, though that doesn’t necessarily affect my placement of this song in particular

2. Cherry Bullet - Love So Sweet: God damn, this song is really good. It’s really simple, but that works to it’s advantage imo. I love that the background melody of the instrumental during the verse is the same as the vocal melody in the chorus (or at least very close), that’s just super satisfying. Ending the song with an extended “da da dadada da da” segment was a big risk too lol, that could have been annoying, but idk I think that really is one of the highlights of the song. This song feels like the kind of song where the songwriter came up with that melody and went “YES! this is IT! YESSSSS” and they knew they had come up with something really, really catchy, and they built the rest of the song around showcasing it. And it works!

1. Dreamcatcher - Odd Eye: This probably isn’t much of a surprise lol. But similar to After School... This isn’t my favorite Dreamcatcher comeback, and tbh I think it’s my least favorite of the Dystopia trilogy. But like... that’s still enough to make it my favorite song of the first quarter of 2021. It’s great, I love the way they do the cyberpunk concept and sound without going into the synthwave direction like Everglow La Di Da did. I love La Di Da a ridiculous amount, but I just mean that it’s nice to see variety even within a similar overall concept. Also! Handong is back! And she crushed it! In previous title tracks she and Gahyeon often got the least amount of lines by far, and the least amount of screentime and such, and Gahyeon definitely got times to shine during Scream and Boca and made it clear that she’s leveled up a lot, and I was really hoping that Odd Eye would be able to do the same for Handong (without sacrificing Gahyeon’s screentime and lines)... and yeah, it really was, lol. Handong was all over this song, and her voice reaaaaaally complements this sound. This group has no weak links, and obviously all of us already knew that, but now even the people who only casually listen to them know that without a doubt too.

idk... i’m not totally sure about this list but that feels mostly right to me i guess. I feel like Odd Eye is definitely my favorite so far, but to be honest I don’t feel like it’s the Song of the Year. like, if it had been released in 2020, I don’t think it would have made my top 10. If nothing better than Odd Eye comes out for the rest of the year then sure, it will be my SOTY haha, but idk, I just think that there hasn’t been anything *truly* great so far yet. And that’s okay... I’m very picky about this kind of thing. I don’t give high scores to things that don’t deserve it lol... and like in my opinion there were only 4 songs in 2020 that are the kind of near-perfect instant-soty song I’m talking about, and three of those four came out in the second half of the year. So the fact that I don’t think anything so far has been at that top level isn’t a bad thing, and isn’t really something I’m worried about. I think we definitely have not gotten the best songs of the year yet (unless everything else ends up sucking lol, but idk i hope thats not what happens...)

oh also there was an WJSN comeback today, and that would probably have been on this list, but I havent heard it yet because i was waiting until I finished writing this haha. like, since it came out on March 31st, tbh I’m just gonna count it as an April comeback, so i’m sure it’ll be in my list for the second quarter that i’ll post at the end of June lol. i mean, unless i dont like it. but i’ll probably like it haha.

[verdiprati]

Hi there! (I love this blog btw, God bless) I'm not an opera expert, hence the anon, but a theatre buff who would very much like to hear your thoughts on Brett Dean's Hamlet if you feel like it ...

Greetings, Anon! Thank you for the compliment on my blog, and thanks for sending me a question! I like to chat and discuss stuff.

I’m not sure if you’ve seen Brett Dean’s Hamlet or not so I am not sure how much context I need to give for my remarks. I will take a stab at this, though.

The first thing I’d observe about Dean’s Hamlet is that it assumes its audience is already very familiar with the play. I think it’s watchable even if you do not know the play well, but sort of like Tom Stoppard’s Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead, it is aimed at people who have probably read the play in school and seen multiple stage performances and/or movie adaptations of it, and who may be able to quote some of the more famous lines from memory. Hamlet is one of the most performed and most adapted pieces of theater in the world; Brett Dean and the librettist Matthew Jocelyn are well aware of that, and do not respond by trying to make the ultimate, most perfect adaptation, but rather by making something new yet recognizable, with plenty of in-jokes. 

As you may know, they sort of put the text(s) through a blender. Many famous lines and familiar characters were completely cut out; other lines were re-ordered and re-assigned. A chorus, nonexistent in the Shakespeare play, was added; as well as making up the court of Elsinore, it functions like a classic Greek chorus, commenting on and amplifying the action, and also like an extension of the orchestra, sometimes adding eerie vocal effects to the overall tapestry of sound in the auditorium. The roles of Horatio and Marcellus are greatly reduced in the Dean/Jocelyn Hamlet while the presence of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern is increased in proportion to (what is left of) the rest of the play.

Probably my favorite thing about the Dean/Jocelyn adaptation of Hamlet is the fact that they deliberately selected bits and pieces of language from all three of the textual witnesses, including the so-called “bad quarto.” To back up and explain a little bit (with apologies if you know this stuff already): there is no one text of Hamlet. As with all the rest of Shakespeare’s plays, we have no manuscript in Shakespeare’s hand. What we have are various early printed editions of Shakespeare’s plays that could plausibly, in one way or another, have derived from a manuscript (or multiple manuscripts!) written by Shakespeare. In the case of Hamlet, there’s the 1603 quarto edition (Q1), the 1604 quarto (Q2), and the version included in the 1623 First Folio of Shakespeare’s plays (F1). The texts of Q2 and F1 are largely similar to each other and most modern editions of Hamlet are based on a melding of them, but Q1 is substantially shorter than the other two texts, a couple of the characters have different names, and some of the speeches are chopped up in ways that seem clearly erroneous (Hamlet’s “To be or not to be” speech is notoriously muddled in Q1). Thus Q1 has come to be known as a “bad quarto” and has traditionally been disparaged and discarded by editors trying to piece together an authoritatively Shakespearean version of Hamlet. 

There are various theories of how Q1 came to be so “bad.” I did my undergraduate thesis on the so-called “bad quarto” of Romeo and Juliet, so I spent a few months reading as much scholarship on the “bad quartos” as I could get my hands on. Some of the “bad quarto” theories are kind of crackpot. The generally-accepted explanation for how these texts came into existence, though, is piracy by memorial reconstruction: the idea is that a couple of actors in Shakespeare’s company would go to a printer and recite as much of the play as they could from memory. They would report their own parts pretty reliably, and they would have fair-to-good recall of other actors’ lines from the scenes they were in, but their recall would degrade for scenes where they were offstage. Moreover, cuts and other changes to the text might have been made in the theater in the process of bringing the play to the stage; these would be reflected in the “bad quarto” but not in other versions of the text deriving more directly from a manuscript penned by Shakespeare. On the plus side, the actors would sometimes supply stage directions in the “bad quartos” that were never specified in other textual witnesses, giving us some valuable clues about the action Shakespeare’s original audiences might actually have seen on the stage.

In recent years, there’s been some interest in reviving the so-called “bad quartos” as performance texts, with an eye towards accessing more “theatrical” versions of Shakespeare’s plays: my interest in the “bad quartos” was first hooked when I met a scholar of early modern performance studies who was directing a “bad quarto” performance of Romeo and Juliet at Oxford in the late ′90s. After finishing my Romeo and Juliet undergrad thesis, I headed off to a graduate program known for its strengths in textual studies, intending to continue in this academic vein. I actually ended up changing fields for my dissertation but I took enough graduate coursework in bibliography, textual criticism, and scholarly editing to achieve geekgasm when Dean and Jocelyn had characters alternately singing “solid” and “sullied”—a reference to a notorious editorial crux in Hamlet, one of the most famous scholarly editing problems of all time. (Here is just one person’s take on the matter.) I really enjoyed the fact that they not only used bits and pieces of Hamlet Q1 on an equal footing with pieces of Q2 and F1 but also took the spirit of a “theatrical” reading of the bad quartos as justification for their adaptation: in cutting and reordering the Hamlet scripts and reassigning many words to other characters, they were not doing anything that Shakespeare’s own company of actors didn’t do. (They did a lot more of it, though!)

Witty and intriguing little turns in the Dean/Jocelyn adaptation flew by too quickly for me to remember them all, but I remember having the impression that their version of Hamlet did a number of things to foreground the theatrical themes of the play. For instance, the whole episode of Hamlet’s trip to England was cut, but the play-within-a-play received lavish attention. (Amber Treadway composed an excellent tweet on “the most meta players scene ever.”) One tiny detail that I especially liked: Hamlet’s line “Do not saw the air too much with your hand,” from his instructions to the players, was relocated to the final duel, where it became a taunt from Hamlet to Laertes, calling attention to the aesthetic aspect of Laertes’ performance as a fencer.

By reducing the cast of soloists, minimizing some of the secondary roles, and completely cutting out all references to the Norwegian threat to the Danish state, Dean and Jocelyn shaped their version of Hamlet into a drama of two interlinked families. Hamlet, the Ghost, Claudius, and Gertrude make up one of the families; Polonius, Laertes, and Ophelia make up the other; and the two are linked by Hamlet and Ophelia’s broken romance. This adaptation foregrounds Gertrude’s tenderness towards Ophelia and Laertes; up until Hamlet gave them reasons to hate him, after all, Gertrude was planning and assuming that she would soon welcome them as new relatives by marriage. Throughout the Glyndebourne staging directed by Neil Armfield, Gertrude can frequently be seen literally reaching out to other characters, touching and caressing them; she is, in this version, a dedicated peacemaker, striving—up until the moment of her own poisoning, when she realizes that her husband intends to kill her son—to hold the court together.

Another interesting presence in this version was the triply-cast role of the ghost of old Hamlet, the first player, and the gravedigger, played memorably by Sir John Tomlinson for the premiere production. I liked the fact that the opera made use of role doubling, a longstanding theatrical practice that is believed to have been used by Shakespeare’s acting company. Besides being one of the elements that made the opera feel very “theatrical” to me, it also allowed the ghost of Hamlet’s father to sort of implicitly or symbolically stick around as an ally to Hamlet. The roles of the first player and the gravedigger stand outside the two-family structure I outlined above, but they fit into another structure of Dean’s Hamlet: Team Hamlet vs. Team Claudius. As Hamlet’s bonds with his immediate family and his girlfriend are rapidly eroded, he turns to figures like Horatio, Marcellus, the players, and the gravedigger for trustworthy information and companionship. As I already mentioned, the roles of Horatio and Marcellus are minimized in this adaptation, so the roles of the first player and the gravedigger take on proportionally greater importance (even though their lines are also reduced). 

Those are my thoughts on Brett Dean’s Hamlet, or at least, as many thoughts as I can write up in an evening. Feel free to send me your thoughts too, or ask follow-up questions!