Hamlet

We flew up to Auckland on a Sunday to catch some Shakespeares. Landing early, we took instruction from the kiosk jockey at the airport Skybus, and got off at stop 7, crossed the road, and picked up the 70 to take us close to, if not actually all the way, our accommodation on the Great South Road.

We were a bit early and the room wasn’t ready yet, so we went down to a local café to have  a beverage and do a crossword. When we returned, all was well with the world, and we settled in quickly before heading straight back out to the CBD for some lunch at Frida Cocina Mexicana.

In the afternoon, we went down Queen Street to find the Odyssey Sensory Maze in the basement of a building on Aotea Square. This involves a number of rooms with different sensory experiences – there’s one with different smells, a jungle room, some very dark tunnels that you have to feel your way through, a mirror maze, balloons, and scary stuff. Also, you go in shoeless, and there’s often different textures underfoot – swampy and squishy. We’d bought the one hour experience, so once we’d finished, we went through again, knowing what to expect this time. We still managed to get lost in the mirrors, though. Took us a while to get out!

We didn’t have time to get back to the motel so we went along to the Britomart station, there acquired two HOP cards so we no longer look like tourists when we get on the bus, and took the train directly to Greenlanes to walk up to the Pop-Up Globe. This is its third year of operation and, coincidentally, our third year of going to visit. This year has an increased production run and more plays, and has been open since December. Tonight’s choice is advertised as The Best Play In The World – Hamlet.

We’d arrived early so that we could avail ourselves of the onsite catering, and grabbed ourselves a cheese platter, some wine and beer, and found a table. After we’d finished, we took ourselves up to our seats on the middle gallery. The play was performed mostly in traditional style, but with a couple of modern touches: in order to correct the gender imbalance, some of the other characters were played by women as women – for example Guildenstern (or was it Rosenkrantz?)  as were Voltimand and Cornelius. Also, Polonius carried a mobile phone, which went off at crucial moments to comic effect, and eventually led to his death (sorry, spoiler alert: they all die). At the end, they all have a good song and dance (always end with a  song!) and we cheered and hurrahed them all.

Our motel was but a short walk away, so we toddled along the road and went to bed.