William Shakespeare: Hamlet

[beer good]

There doesn't seem to be a separate thread, so I might as well create one.

The reason? I caught the final night of the RSC's Hamlet on a whim on Saturday. Now, with David Tennant and Patrick Stewart in the lead roles it's obviously a bit of an audience flirtation, but I liked it a lot.

I like Tennant both on TV and here, even though he plays Hamlet more or less like he plays everything - like a bipolar emo kid in his 30s - but of course that's what Hamlet is, at least in this interpretation, and he's active and intense enough to balance the humour and the darker bits, especially when he's interacting with the others. Not that the soliloquies are bad in any way, but it's in his riffing against Claudius, Ros&Guil et al - not to mention the bedroom scene - that he really shines. They certainly play up the humour (even inserting a gag from Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead) but it works mostly as bait, to draw the audience in and then serve up the darkness underneath, and don't shy away from the possibility that Hamlet really is quite mad. Having Stewart play both Claudius and the Ghost (very well, btw, Claudius almost seems sympathetic even when he's at his coldest) opens up some interesting interpretations, and the bedroom scene in particular almost makes it obvious; Hamlet tries to run after the Ghost, who walks out through a door in the mirror that makes up the backdrop of the stage, the mirror swings shut and where the Ghost stood a second ago is just a fractured reflection of Hamlet. It's no wonder that the only major omission from Shakespeare's text I could think of was Fortinbras' final speech; this Hamlet, had he been put on, would probably not have proved very royal. (Though I suppose that depends on what one considers royal behaviour...)

They do a great job of giving all characters their moment to shine, though, and for me the revelation was Oliver Ford Davies as Polonius; this Polonius isn't the scheming lickspittle of some productions, he's just a slightly foolish old man (approaching senility) trying to do his job even as he grows increasingly frustrated with Hamlet's shenanigans ("VERY LIKE A WHALE!"). And his interactions with Ophelia and Laertes (excellent too) really get quite touching, making that family come across as the functional, loving one. Well, by comparison.

I'm not sure this was a great Hamlet - it's only the second time I've seen it live on stage - but it was a very enjoyable one with some angles I hadn't seen before.

 

[beer good]

I saw a pretty good production of Hamlet the other day. Stockholm City Theatre (which is one of the biggest companies in the country) put on a very stripped-down version, both textually (they'd cut large chunks out of the first two acts and rearranged some of the scenes) and scenographically (for most scenes, the only prop is a chair on a bare stage). Oh, and it was all in modern dress too. But the changes worked, for the most part; this was a furious and very troubled Hamlet.

The story in brief: Hamlet, prince of Denmark, played by Gustaf Skarsgård - son of Stellan (Pirates of the Caribbean etc) - is convinced that his new stepfather has killed his father. He's convinced of this because he saw it in a dream - he sees the ghost of his father, we in the audience only see a lot of smoke and a frantic, gaunt-faced young man talking to a disembodied voice. He tells this to his friend Horatio, a short, bald fellow dressed all in black whom nobody else ever notices and who only talks to Hamlet. His family, worried by his increasingly psychotic outbursts (the more he tells himself he's just faking it in order to extract a confession, the less convincing he sounds) agrees to a charade: they'll enact a play he's written. When his uncle-father realises what it's about, he freaks out and... well, you know what happens.

It's a version of the play that seems to shout "What the hell is Hamlet's problem?" (Or possibly "what the hell is Hamlet's problem?") By making all the proof of the uncle's guilt (until he confesses it to himself) suspect, by having Hamlet constantly on stage, in a chair, his head in his hands, perhaps dreaming everyone else, it calls into question whether any of what's happening is real - and then brutally shoves Ophelia's all-too-real fate in our face. Horatio, the non-noble childhood friend whom Hamlet hasn't seen in years and only shows up when he starts seeing ghosts, certainly isn't real; as Hamlet gives his final speech, he's alone on stage, speaking to empty air, and the rest was never more silent.

For better or worse, Skarsgård is one of the most intense Hamlets I've seen; he rants, spits, yells and menaces his way through the play, getting more hollow-eyed and ragged as it moves on, making himself the protagonist rather than the wishy-washy doubter the old prince is often seen as. So where's all this anger coming from? It's Hamlet as a play about both misplaced honour (in one of the most effective scenes, Claudius and Laertes discuss how to get revenge on Hamlet for the murder of Polonius, while Ophelia slowly drowns in full view of them if they'd only look up and see her), and about the need to find a villain, if need be to invent one. A tragedy about our need to be heroes in a tragedy rather than bit players in a comedy - our need to find a Claudius we can kill in good conscience, a scapegoat for everything unfair in the world. In this version, both Polonius and Gertrude really are loving (if slightly misguided) parents, and Laertes' tragedy is that he's too hung up on family honour to actually save his family; they're good people, but it's not enough. Skarsgård (or let's blame the director) is a little too fond of glancing in the direction of the audience while shouting about art holding up mirrors on real life, but the message comes across: Hamlet, or at least this Hamlet, is about us. Or tries to be, anyway.

 

[JuliaR]

I saw a pretty good production of Hamlet the other day. Stockholm City Theatre (which is one of the biggest companies in the country) put on a very stripped-down version, both textually (they'd cut large chunks out of the first two acts and rearranged some of the scenes) and scenographically (for most scenes, the only prop is a chair on a bare stage). Oh, and it was all in modern dress too. But the changes worked, for the most part; this was a furious and very troubled Hamlet.

The story in brief: Hamlet, prince of Denmark, played by Gustaf Skarsgård - son of Stellan (Pirates of the Caribbean etc) - is convinced that his new stepfather has killed his father. He's convinced of this because he saw it in a dream - he sees the ghost of his father, we in the audience only see a lot of smoke and a frantic, gaunt-faced young man talking to a disembodied voice. He tells this to his friend Horatio, a short, bald fellow dressed all in black whom nobody else ever notices and who only talks to Hamlet. His family, worried by his increasingly psychotic outbursts (the more he tells himself he's just faking it in order to extract a confession, the less convincing he sounds) agrees to a charade: they'll enact a play he's written. When his uncle-father realises what it's about, he freaks out and... well, you know what happens.

It's a version of the play that seems to shout "What the hell is Hamlet's problem?" (Or possibly "what the hell is Hamlet's problem?") By making all the proof of the uncle's guilt (until he confesses it to himself) suspect, by having Hamlet constantly on stage, in a chair, his head in his hands, perhaps dreaming everyone else, it calls into question whether any of what's happening is real - and then brutally shoves Ophelia's all-too-real fate in our face. Horatio, the non-noble childhood friend whom Hamlet hasn't seen in years and only shows up when he starts seeing ghosts, certainly isn't real; as Hamlet gives his final speech, he's alone on stage, speaking to empty air, and the rest was never more silent.

For better or worse, Skarsgård is one of the most intense Hamlets I've seen; he rants, spits, yells and menaces his way through the play, getting more hollow-eyed and ragged as it moves on, making himself the protagonist rather than the wishy-washy doubter the old prince is often seen as. So where's all this anger coming from? It's Hamlet as a play about both misplaced honour (in one of the most effective scenes, Claudius and Laertes discuss how to get revenge on Hamlet for the murder of Polonius, while Ophelia slowly drowns in full view of them if they'd only look up and see her), and about the need to find a villain, if need be to invent one. A tragedy about our need to be heroes in a tragedy rather than bit players in a comedy - our need to find a Claudius we can kill in good conscience, a scapegoat for everything unfair in the world. In this version, both Polonius and Gertrude really are loving (if slightly misguided) parents, and Laertes' tragedy is that he's too hung up on family honour to actually save his family; they're good people, but it's not enough. Skarsgård (or let's blame the director) is a little too fond of glancing in the direction of the audience while shouting about art holding up mirrors on real life, but the message comes across: Hamlet, or at least this Hamlet, is about us. Or tries to be, anyway.

I saw it too in Stockholm!