Lemerande, a Navy Reserve officer, was performing - on his own time - at International Security Assistance Force headquarters in Afghanistan, where he has been stationed as a public affairs officer since May.
A typical show at the base might feature a television star or Hollywood actor, accompanied by a group like the Dallas Cowboys cheerleaders. “Hamlet’’? Not so much.
But nearly 500 uniformed men and women have heard his soaring soliloquies (“To be or not to be …’’), marveled at his pantomime sword fights, and listened raptly to his rendition of the stirring “band of brothers’’ speech (“For he that sheds his blood with me/Shall be my brother’’) from “Henry V.’’
Calling last month’s show “one of the coolest nights of my life,’’ Lemerande said that exposing his military brethren to Shakespeare, hardly standard entertainment fare on most military outposts, is a honor he will not soon forget.
His wife, Amy McLaughlin Lemerande, 36, a Marshfield native, joined the Skype conversation from the couple’s Scituate home. Together they run the Knighthorse Theatre Company, a nonprofit organization that brings Shakespeare’s works into schools across the United States.
Among those attending Lemerande’s “Hamlet’’ was Vice Admiral Tony Johnstone-Burt of the British Royal Navy. In an e-mail, he raved about the passion and energy Lemerande brought to a play that would tax the stamina of most full-fledged theater companies.
“We were all glued to our seats,’’ Johnstone-Burt wrote. Compared with other shows at ISAF headquarters, this one “easily outshone anything else by a country mile.’’
Lemerande completes his six-month deployment this month. He’ll be home by mid-December, reunited with his wife and 2-year-old son, Declan. For him, Afghanistan has not been a particularly dangerous assignment. His primary task: dealing with press representatives from 48 nations, not land mines and sniper fire.
