If I describe Charlotte Jones's "Humble Boy" as "Hamlet" as it might have been rewritten by Alan Ayckbourn and Tom Stoppard, it makes it sound less fresh than it is.
However, preconceptions aside, it turned out we actually had a great time and had to examine a lot of our preconceptions and got a bit turned on and oh boy, Tower Hamlets, you better not close down them clubz.
The mysterious family house there, Elsinore, was a place where the little dark-haired boy could play Hamlet and look for ghosts: "There were great cellars under the house, for it had been a smuggler's house a hundred years before.... .. The house has been allowed, indeed encouraged, to completely go to ruin, which is most unfortunate.
When English Touring Theatre conducted a poll of the nation's favourite plays, Tom Stoppard's Arcadia came in an impressive fourth behind The History Boys, Noises Off and Hamlet.
In only a few minutes, one boy had flung together a hamlet of sand mounds protected by a low, curving wall.
(Dame Edith Evans is reputed to have said in the wings to one faltering, last-minute Hamlet: "Well, my boy, you had your chance — and you muffed it").
Dressed as a boy, she sometimes brings to mind Hamlet's feigning madness.
She asked if I had any explanation, and I confessed that I did not, observing only that Hamlet was a little boy at the time.
As a boy I saw a production of Hamlet at Ludlow.
One boy glared menacingly as the ghost of Hamlet's murdered father, while another boy, as Hamlet, dropped to his knees in fear.
As a boy, he could recite long passages from "Hamlet".
