A “wild” mix of clowning, Shakespeare and videogame nostalgia can be seen at Buxton Fringe in Edward Day’s one-man show Super Hamlet 64: Parody DLC.
Equipped with an ocarina, a ukulele and a thirst for revenge, Day battles through four decades of videogame geekery in a quest to kill his uncle and win at life.
Day said, “Hamlet is a story about a person unable to make any decisions, weighed down by tragic circumstances, struggling to will himself to avenge his dad's death. Super Hamlet 64: Parody DLC is homage to the art of the videogame and the humanity and beauty of Shakespeare's verse.
“It challenges how much free will we really have in our lives, looking at ideas of privilege, gender, mortality and the ideals we live our lives by in this digital age.”
Day has taken more than 100 videogame quotes, visual references and pieces of music and woven them into the story of Hamlet, dying again and again as he fails at life.
He has turned Ophelia into a kickass gamer geek with a penchant for samurai swords, the graveyard scene into a zombie shootout and the final fight with Laertes into an epic battle with a giant mechanical beast which spews clouds of noxious gas.
Super Hamlet 64: Parody DLC features animation and video projection by a team from Derby arts centre QUAD. It plays in the Green Man Gallery, Hardwick Hall, Hardwick Square South, Buxton on Friday 14 July at 6PM and Monday and Wednesday 17 and 19 July at 6:30PM.