Dogg’s Hamlet, Cahoot’s Macbeth by Tom Stoppard

In Dogg’s Hamlet, a group of young actors are setting up for their production Hamlet, performed in its original language. The catch? These students speak “Dogg” – a language comprised of English words, but with different meanings. When an English-speaking delivery man arrives with their set components, both languages break down and new ways of communication must be devised. This is Stoppard at his word-playing, gleeful best.

In Cahoot’s Macbeth, the second play in Tom Stoppard’s pairing, renegade actors stage a secret performance of Shakespeare’s Macbeth that becomes a stark and moving metaphor for resistance in a time of censorship. “The incorrigibly playful Stoppard has never been more serious than in this most playful of his works. Like George Orwell, Stoppard knows that language and liberty are intertwined: when language is perverted, corrupted or forcibly repressed, so is liberty.”Newsweek The New York Times added, “The language and the laughter are contagious”