Potomac Theatre Project (PTP/NYC)
in association with Middlebury College
presents

GERTRUDE -- THE CRY

Written by HOWARD BARKER
Directed by RICHARD ROMAGNOLI

Featuring
BILL ARMY, PAMELA J. GRAY, ROBERT EMMET LUNNEY, ALEX DRAPER,
DAVID BARLOW, KATHRYN KATES, & MEGHAN LEATHERS

Ensemble
JOELLE MENDOZA, AASHNA AGGARWAL, & JAKE SCHWARTZWALD

Scenic Design: MARK EVANCHO
Lighting Design: HALLIE ZIESELMAN
Costume Design: DANIELLE NIEVES
Sound Design: CORMAC BLUESTONE
Press Representative: DAVID GIBBS/DARR Publicity

Atlantic Stage
330 West 16th Street
New York, NY 10011
(866) 811-4111 or www.PTPNYC.org
July 15 through August 5, 2014

This play unfolds in and around Elsinore, in the present. Yes, the Elsinore of Hamlet. And yes, the Gertrude who was Hamlet’s mother. Playwright HOWARD BARKER has turned Shakespeare’s Hamlet on its head, then shaken and stirred, then put the blender on “whip”, letting the modernized characters take you to places you’ve never dreamt of, even in your wildest dreams. Gertrude is a sex-machine, and Claudius (brother of her murdered husband) is all over her like a rash. Everywhere, anywhere, it’s time for him to unbuckle and for her to hike up that mini-skirt. Even funerals are suitable venues for lust. Pretty exciting stuff.

Although in modern dress (and undress), the characters speak in classical tones reminiscent of Shakespeare’s cadences. Hamlet is already mad, in the British sense, and he is angry, in the American sense. Gertrude is cold and controlling which seems to excite men even more. Men, plural. She really has no limits when it comes to lust. It doesn’t hurt that she is quite beautiful as well.

Humor also floats through this tsunami of sex. Hamlet often seems a bit like Dagwood in his cluelessness and confusion. His grandmother disapproves of all these goings-on, but rolls with it. Shrug. She gets a few zingers in when she can.

HOWARD BARKER enjoys grabbing great texts of the past and turning them inside-out to investigate their underlying assumptions and comment on the social mores of the past and the present. With GERTRUDE he has created a real psycho-sexual masterpiece.

-Karen D’Onofrio-