INDIANAPOLIS – Lacking the necessary analytical skills to objectively critique a work of theatre, parents of youngsters in a St Vincent High School production of Hamlet thought that the laborious, 3-hour show was pretty neat.
Congratulating her son Ben on what was actually a painfully lackluster and wooden performance in the title role, Maggie Polworth insisted that the 17-year-old was “really fun” and that he looked “very funny” in those navy blue tights.
“Wow, that was… wow,” she said, addressing Ben after the performance. “You did really good.”
“What a fun little play that was,” she continued.
Having displayed no elementary understanding of the main plot points of Shakespeare’s famous tragedy, the parents of Sophie Anderson, who was horribly miscast as Ophelia, couldn’t believe how their 16-year-old daughter “managed to remember all of those lines.”
“She didn’t fluff one,” said the girl’s father Gary. “I mean she was… you did terrific tonight, honey.”
These proclamations come just two months after virtually the same sets of parents were left utterly confused by Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot, which they never-the-less regarded as a… well, an interesting story.