This Is Hamlet

A portrait of village life in South Thailand, home of retired Malay-Muslim members of the communist party of neighboring Malaysia. Recollections of the decades-long guerrilla war are interspersed with a Thai radio soap opera.

In this loose adaptation of Shakespeare's "Henry IV," Mike Waters is a hustler afflicted with narcolepsy. Scott Favor is the rebellious son of a mayor. Together, the two travel from Portland, Oregon to Idaho and finally to the coast of Italy in a quest to find Mike's estranged mother. Along the way they turn tricks for money and drugs, eventually attracting the attention of a wealthy benefactor and sexual deviant.

Henry IV usurps the English throne, sets in motion the factious War of the Roses and now faces a rebellion led by Northumberland scion Hotspur. Henry's heir, Prince Hal, is a ne'er-do-well carouser who drinks and causes mischief with his low-class friends, especially his rotund father figure, John Falstaff. To redeem his title, Hal may have to choose between allegiance to his real father and loyalty to his friend.

Ah, summer! School is out, work slows down and passions heat up in the warm summer air. Theatrically speaking, it's the perfect time for a sexy comedy where no one is what, or who, they seem and life is full of romantic possibilities. In other words, the perfect time for William Shakespeare's TWELFTH NIGHT, or 'What You Will—’ which Lincoln Center Theater presented in the summer of 1998 at the Vivian Beaumont Theater.

The film starts with the veteran thespian Harish Mishra, he is gravely ill. The punishments of a film shoot have left the old man in a coma. His co-star, Shabnam, is wracked with worry, but their director, Siddharth, keeps strangely distant and refuses to visit his ailing star. In flashbacks, their story emerges.

Young Shakespeare is forced to stage his latest comedy, "Romeo and Ethel, the Pirate's Daughter," before it's even written. When a lovely noblewoman auditions for a role, they fall into forbidden love - and his play finds a new life (and title). As their relationship progresses, Shakespeare's comedy soon transforms into tragedy.

Shakespeare wrote this fantastic comedy in 1594. It features Lysander and Hermia, whose love is thwarted by Hermia's father, who wishes to marry her off to Demetrius, himself loved by Helena. In a magical forest, the couple cross paths with Obéron, king of the elves, who is quarreling with his wife and in possession of love potions.

Helena loves the arrogant Bertram, and when she cures the King of France of his sickness, she claims Bertram as her reward. But her new husband, flying from Helena to join the wars, attaches two obstructive conditions to their marriage - conditions he is sure will never be met. Featuring Olivier-award winning actress Janie Dee as the Countess of Roussillon.

The fat knight Sir John Falstaff imagines that Mistress Ford and Mistress Page are both taken with him and so, attracted as much by their husbands’ money as their personal charms, he decides to woo them both. But the women are up to the old lecher’s tricks and turn the tables on him with a series of humiliating assignations, midnight terrors and a very damp, extremely smelly laundry basket. Gutsy, colloquial and bustling with vivid characters, The Merry Wives of Windsor is a brilliantly constructed farce and the only comedy Shakespeare set in his native land. It is also the ancestor of English bourgeois comedy and gave birth to a tradition that reaches down to the modern TV sitcom. The production made merry with the relationship between the life of middle-class Elizabethan England and the late medieval period in which the play is set.

When the King of Navarre and his three courtiers forswear all pleasure - particularly of the female variety - in favour of a life of study, the arrival of the Princess of France and her ladies plays havoc with their intentions. Using every kind of verbal gymnastics to poke fun, Shakespeare's most intellectual comedy is brought to hilarious life in this highly entaining production, rich in visual humour and sexual innuendo.