Green Eggs and Hamlet

'Green Eggs and Hamlet'. 'Hamlet: Blood in the Brain'. 'Hamlet for Girls'. 'Hamlet, the End of a Childhood'. 'Hamlet! The Musical'. A quick flick through my guide reveals at least five reworkings of Shakespeare's finest at this year's Fringe. I've just seen one of them - 'Green Eggs and Hamlet', courtesy of Bath University Student Theatre, but it has none of the wit, rhythm or charm of the Dr Seuss stories its title threatens to parody, let alone do anything vaguely original or amusing with the source material. The acting is dry and stiff with the odd garbled line, the casting defies logic (Hamlet looks the same age as Claudius, if not older; the same actress plays Ophelia and Gertrude - unless that was a deliberate, Oedipan nod that I missed) and, most importantly, it is not funny! I don't know who produced the 'Seussian' dialogue, but it sounds like a bowdlerised bastard version of the original with very little sign of Dr Seuss, and the only sprig of physical humour is the sight of the Dane in a blonde wig and black dress as a sign he's gone mad. Ha!I feel dreadful, because the cast have obviously put a lot of effort into this and it is not an easy play to tackle in any form. This version does not have to even approach emulating the likes of Ron Daniels and Mark Rylance, of course it doesn't, or even 'The Lion King' (the pre-eminent example of how to rework Shakespeare for children), or even 'Hamlet 2', Steve Coogan's misjudged attempt to break Hollywood, but, as an hour of entertainment on any level, I'm afraid this fails.But why update 'Hamlet' at all? Who is this aimed at? The world is saturated with remakes, tongue-in-cheek and otherwise, and unless it is an outstandingly innovative treatment of one of the most parodied plays in history (you are already in a field of five here in Edinburgh), why bother? Write something yourselves, Bath University Student Theatre: there'll be one more piece of new writing, one fewer Hamlet rehash, and everyone will be better off for it. Now, who's for 'Titus Andronicus On Ice'?