Status Updates From How to Read a Play

The short, easy-to-follow instructions for readers of drama becomes more obsessed with details one should pick up in the script while glossing over the many more minutiae that a screenplay has in store: Pulp Fiction being the most current it gets. For all the praise Hayman heaps on Stoppard, my rereading of a few plays (plus a recent viewing of his screen adaptation of Tolstoy) reveals how cringe he can get.

A few more visual examples of stagecraft are pulled from memorable plays and slowly the conversation evolves from what audiences see performed on stage to the active imagination in use by spectators, seeing both the seen and unseen elements. Yet Hayman cautions against a psychoanalytic reading of character’s intentions. Perhaps a subtle jab at Olivier’s film Hamlet that enacts every Freudian slip it can.

Hayman leans toward the visual aspects of a play when words in the script are transposed physically onto the stage, the first four chapters put an emphasis on the aural effects of stage directions and dialogue. Choosing a selection of familiar Shakespearean scenes and modern stagecraft, the audience has more to ponder when an absence is noted, such as a silent pause, that might provoke an actor to innovative insight.