HAMLET: The Video Game (The Stage Show) product reviews

Hamlet: The Video Game (The Stage Show). The name alone is simultaneously descriptive and incredibly vague. What the cast and crew are trying to achieve is incredibly ambitious; a live interactive stage show of a video game style adaptation to Shakespeare's Hamlet. The level of organisation and attention to detail is immense. The show involves minimal set pieces and cast, instead, using a myriad of props and wildly variable costumes.

Heading around the side of the Aotea Centre to the Herald Theatre, the layout of the seating in the venue was in itself a positive aspect. The tall room has the seating configured in a manner that allows everyone a full unobstructed view of the stage area, as well as offering the actors and actresses direct unhindered access to the front row of the audience. This is incredibly important in a stage show such as this; a show that uses visual cues for comedic effect.

The opening scene serves as the prologue and uses a mix of acting and pre-recorded on-screen footage. In this case, the audience can appreciate the look that the cast were attempting to achieve, but due to the angle of view from the tiered seating, and the distance of the actress from the screen, the scene failed to properly sync up. Looking at the first few characters to appear on stage, their costumes were over-the-top and visually very different from each other. While initially odd, it served a dual purpose of allowing the three-person cast (that's right, Dan Bain, Kathleen Burns, and Jared Corbin are the only actors/actresses involved, excluding the music person) to play multiple characters without causing confusion as to whom they were, and allowed the inclusion of gaming characters and references.

Advertised as a "video game" adaptation, the show employs a veritable plethora of gaming references in its visual aids, props, costumes, and wordplay within the dialogue. As a casual gamer, there were many laugh-out-loud moments with the incredibly campy, cheesy, and often forced incorporation of gaming sources, and they provide a nod to the audience with each one to ensure we are all aware of the concentration of references from Mortal Kombat and Call of Duty, to Angry Birds and Tetris. It went far beyond the dialogue, with many nods to the general attributes of gameplay; tutorials, character customization, save points, loot drops, combos, achievements, even the movement of the characters are all covered in some way in the show.

The cast do brilliantly. It took me longer than I care to admit to realise that there were only three cast members involved. Corbin's size and aggressively passionate demeanour makes him the perfect lead for the show. His ability to switch from aggressive fighter to rambunctiously handing out cheesy one-liners to the audience was enjoyable to watch. Burns manages to catch the audience's eye with her infectious smile, femininity, and meticulously chosen amount of bared cleavage, while concurrently berating game developers for limited choices in female body types and armour choices.

Admittedly, the crowd interactions are rather limited. There are three times during the show where the audience are called upon, and looking back, "calling the shots" is rather an over-exaggeration. Even in such a case as the character customization portion of the show, it's obvious that not all the options would actually work, and the cast will play and manipulate the audience to get the results that they need to continue on.

It's cheesy, but it's fun and definitely a different take on the same old story. The repurposing of the set pieces was very well done, with every surface of each piece efficiently used. The characters costumes being so outlandish and over-the-top that the character can be played by multiple cast members (even by different genders). It's incredibly well thought out. Not a "serious" play, by any measure, but definitely something that I'd recommend checking out.