Hamlet
A PRODUCER greets the trendy young actress JULIE who is to play Ophelia in his Hamlet.
PRODUCER: Julie, great, wonderful to see you.
JULIE: Howard, darling.
(They embrace)
PRODUCER: Kiss kiss.
JULIE: Such hugs.
PRODUCER: Right, now you’ve read the script?
JULIE: Darling, it’s the most sublime thing I’ve ever seen. ‘Village, King of Sweden.’
PRODUCER: Hamlet.
JULIE: What?
PRODUCER: Hamlet, Prince of Denmark. You’re playing Ophelia.
JULIE: Ophelia, of course, silly me.
PRODUCER: Now, I mainly wanted to go over wardrobe with you today –
JULIE: Oh wardrobe, goodness, yes. I suppose it’ll be lots of corsets and suspender belts and things?
PRODUCER: What?
JULIE: You know, I’ve always wanted to play a tart. One gets so terribly fed up of all these goody-goody roles where one’s constantly being asked to keep one’s clothes on.
PRODUCER: Actually, Julie, Ophelia’s not a tart.
JULIE: Are you sure?
PRODUCER: Yes, I’ve researched this one quite thoroughly.
JULIE: But there is a nude scene isn’t there?
PRODUCER: No, no there isn’t.
JULIE: Oh, but I thought –
PRODUCER: No.
JULIE: No nude scene at all? Are you sure we’ll be able to get away with this?
PRODUCER: Ha ha ha. Now look, for your first appearance I thought –
JULIE: We are talking about the same Hambone aren’t we?
PRODUCER: Hamlet, yes.
JULIE: By William Makepeace Tha –
PRODUCER: William Shakespeare, yes.
JULIE: Oh. Oh well. Fine. You’re the director. Go ahead. Say on, Macduff, ha ha ha.
PRODUCER: Ha ha ha. Now, wardrobe –
JULIE: Um, Howard, just one point, do I have to take my clothes off at all?
PRODUCER: No Julie, you don’t.
JULIE: Only I’ve been on a diet.
PRODUCER: I can tell. Lovely darling, suits you. Now I thought we’d start you off in –
JULIE: Howard, I don’t want to be a bore about this but isn’t there somewhere I could just, say, flash one areola?
PRODUCER: Well, I hardly think –
JULIE: Expose one buttock? Half a buttock? The top half of the left cheek, just next to the callipygian cleft?
PRODUCER: It’s not going to be that sort of production, Julie.
JULIE: But my agent said it was going to break new ground?
PRODUCER: In terms of interpretation, yes. We’re going to revolutionise the ghost scene, for instance.
JULIE: Ah, by having me draped naked round his shoulders perhaps?
PRODUCER: Not exactly.
JULIE: Well, might I just throw that in as an idea?
PRODUCER: No Julie, that’s not quite what I’m after –
JULIE: Tell you what, that bit where Haemorrhoid stabs Pandarus up the arse, couldn’t I come on dripping soap suds as if I’d been alarmed in my bath?
PRODUCER: No.
JULIE: I could wear a body stocking? Leg warmers?
PRODUCER: Look, Julie, I’m not asking you to do a nude scene in this play.
JULIE: But what about that bit where Clause catches me in the nunnery and scourges my quivering body with birch twigs?
PRODUCER: What are you on about, you silly nit, this is Shakespeare not Dennis Potter.
JULIE: Howard, there’s no need to get offensive. I’m just telling you if you want me to do a nude scene, fair enough. I mean, I’m not a prude.
PRODUCER: All right, if it really means that much to you I’ll let you take your top off at the read-through, how’s that?
JULIE: And rehearsals?
PRODUCER: No, not rehearsals.
JULIE: Well. OK. Just for you, darling.
PRODUCER: Great. Terrific. Now, if we could just get back to wardrobe for a moment –
JULIE: Just one thing, Howard. If you want me to appear topless at the read-through I’m afraid I’m going to have to ask for more money.
PS
I must have been feeling a bit frisky one afternoon and knocked this off in about half an hour. Nudity on stage – or anywhere else, for that matter – was still a bit of a piquant idea for me, and the mental image of a nubile young actress called Julie actually lobbying to get her kit off struck me as a right turn-on.
On the other hand, this is one of those sketches where once you’ve had the idea, it doesn’t really do anything but write itself. Establish the characters and the situation with the minimum of fuss – the producer’s cardigan and the actress’s silk scarf will probably do all the character-drawing you need – and then it’s just painting by numbers time: Hamlet/village play on words, check; ‘Are you sure we can get away with no nude scene at all?’ reversal joke, check; the surprise that this air-head actress knows enough about nudity to know that the Greeks had a word for a shapely backside and that word was callipygian (and probably still is, for all I know), check; “that bit where Haemorrhoid stabs Pandarus up the arse”, gratuitous vulgarity, check; eventual resolution, but just when we think we’ve got everything sorted out, final twist: “If you want me to appear topless at the read-through I’m afraid I’m going to have to ask for more money,” check.
Maybe I’m being ultra-critical in an attempt to appear overly modest. Most of the sketches in this section are there because I know they work, they have been tried in the trenches of actual performance. But this one has never been performed. Then again, maybe it doesn’t hurt to know how to structure a piece so that the audience can follow its development, have a few laughs along the way, and clap a bit at the end because they’ve been tickled. Once the kitchen-sink mob turned up at the Royal Court Theatre in the mid-fifties, there was a serious backlash against the likes of Terence Rattigan and his era of the ‘well-made play’. Just because there was a new kid in town, suddenly all the old codgers who’d been delighting us for decades were supposed to simply fold up their tents and fuck off into the night thank you very much and good riddance. What nonsense. Art isn’t a competition, or a race. It’s a broad church with room for all tastes and tropes. This is simply a good old-fashioned little sketch which says its piece and doesn’t outstay its welcome… and only maybe has the temerity to suggest that for all the feminist protests about gratuitous nudity in the visual arts, there might still be one small percentage of the acting profession who, while they have the looks and the nous, are happy to exploit the trend for all its worth, while they can. But I’m not suggesting that. The sketch is.