The Playbill On-Line members with the following screen names answered the most correctly in the Playbill On-Line Hamlet master quiz:
mddenton
J. Marchese
JABrowner
ZiggyNYC
As acknowledgement of their superior knowledge, they'll each get a three-cassette recording of Richard Burton's acclaimed 1963 Hamlet featuring Alfred Drake as Claudius, Hume Cronyn as Polonius, John Cullum as Laertes, Barnard Hughes as Marcellus, George Rose as the First Gravedigger, Eileen Herlie as Gertrude and Linda Marsh as Ophelia.
Winners should contact Playbill On-Line Managing EditorRobert Viagas at [email protected] with mailing addresses.
Written by Playbill On-Line Senior Editor Louis Botto, the following quiz was prompted by the release of Kenneth Branagh's nearly four-hour movie version of Hamlet. Here's one last chance to test yourself. The Qs and As will be posted Jan. 20 in the Quizzes section of Playbill On-Line. 1: The Broadway season of 1936 witnessed what became known as "the war of the Hamlets." Two famous British stars played Hamlet. Name the star who scored a palpable hit (132 performances) and the one who declaimed 39 performances in the role.
2: Name the celebrated British critic who stated that Hamlet was "fundamentally unplayable."
3: Name the member of the "Royal Family of the Theatre" who scored a triumph as Hamlet in 1932.
4: The 1949 revue, Touch and Go, had an amusing parody of Hamlet called "Great Dane A-Comin'." Name the famous critic and his wife who wrote this show and the parody.
5: In the 1936 revue The Show Is On, comedienne Beatrice Lillie appeared in a sketch in which she kept interrupting Reginald Gardiner impersonating a famed British actor playing Hamlet. Name the star Gardiner was impersonating and the famous playwright who wrote the sketch.
6: A rock adaptation of Hamlet was a 1976 flop on Broadway. Name the musical and its distinguished director.
7: A writer noted for his musical comedy librettos wrote a play in 1966 about a repertory company playing Hamlet in a small town near the Baltic Sea, Name the play, the author and its two stars.
8: In 1938, a British actor scored a triumph in New York's uncut Hamlet, which had a dinner intermission. In 1945 this same actor brought his "cut" Hamlet, which he had performed for the miliary during World War II. It was thus called the "G.I. Hamlet." Who was this actor?
9: Many phrases from the dialogue in Hamlet have been used as titles of plays, films and books. A play called Russet Mantle in 1936 was written by the same playwright who wrote Green Grow the Lilacs, which inspired the musical Oklahoma!. Name the playwright. Name the star of Paddy Chayefsky's Middle of the Night. A raunchy play called The Primrose Path shocked Broadway in 1939. Name the famous man who directed it. Who was the Hungarian playwright who wrote the witty comedy The Play's the Thing? The author of Outrageous Fortune in 1943 also wrote the hit plays Another Language and Claudia. Who was she?
0: In 1947, a British actor came to New York to play Hamlet. A critic reacted by writing: "Oh, to be in England now that ------ ------ is here." Name the British actor.
: Speaking of titles drawn from Hamlet, the film To Be or Not To Be tells the story of a troupe of Polish actors trying to escape from the Nazis. Name the actors who played the male lead in the 1942 original and in the 1983 remake.
2: The longest-running Hamlet in Broadway history ran 137 performances in 1995. Who played the title role?
3: In her 1995 Broadway concert, Patti LuPone sang "Hamlet," a song that summarized the drama's plot entirely in Swing-era slang. The song was first performed in a 1949 film, and was composed by one of Broadway's most famous songwriters. What was the film and who wrote the song?
4: One of Disney's most successful animated films ever (currently being adapted for Broadway) has a plot roughly based on Hamlet (with a little Henry IV thrown in). Tell the film title and the names given to the characters who bear an uncanny resemblance to Hamlet, Claudius, Gertrude and Hamlet's father.
