We once brought "Omelette" to Eyrecourt, Co Galway. Or Hamlet as most people would have known the play. Ours was a scrambled version, though we didn't mean it to be. I was either Rosencrantz or Guildenstern. Such were the demands of the role, I cannot remember which.
It was a space-age version of the play, all see-through glass and pastel shades such as found on Star Trek. It was also the first (and last) production of the newly formed Shakespeare Society at UCG. The patron was professor of English Lorna Reynolds. She lived in Eyrecourt.
The production had already been staged at the Jes Hall in Galway, to somewhat limited acclaim.
It snowed that Sunday at the end of April as we went to Eyrecourt, an omen for the out-of-kilter day ahead. We were invited to Prof Reynolds’s house where the hospitality was generous and she insisted on calling us by our stage names.
Hence “. . . more tea Hamlet?”, a catch phrase among us long afterwards. The parish hall had a built-in box set with narrow space to move behind it. A ladder to the dressing room below was missing, with a rope in its place.
The stage was extended using planks on barrels. No audience came. The cast went to the pub.
A teacher arrived with some kids and the cast came back in high spirits, led by a fluttered Hamlet. The performance began, as it would continue. Horatio told the ghost of Hamlet’s father to “ . . . stay Pete, stay”. Soon all was chaos as the cast could not get from dressing room to stage on time. The director retired to a shed outside with a naggin of vodka.
Hamlet began to edit the play as he went along, dropping entire scenes and tottering precariously on the planks. As he declaimed ". . . to be or not to be…" Prof Lorna, sitting in the front row, jumped up to save him believing he was about to fall.
And it was discovered the rapiers for the last fight scene were missing. It was fought with daggers drawn. Too, too much. Rarely in the history of theatre have so many “dead” on a stage quivered in restrained laughter.
On this, the 400th anniversary of his death, we beg the Bard’s forgiveness.
Omelette, from French, and the Latin lamella, meaning "thin, small plate", (referring to shape).
