HAMLET at the Almeida - something old, something new...

It is now with a regular sense of trepidation that I take my seat to see any play from The Repertoire - it used to be plays pre-20th Century but now even Tennessee Williams has fallen victim to the sweep of Director Theatre - and as the lights go down I ask myself "Am I going to see a version of a classic play that will illuminate while showing why it has stood the test of time - or am I going to see a production by a director who is jamming a classic text into their pre-conceived ideas of audience alienation and quirk-for-quirk's sake gender-blind casting or post-modern tropes?"

It was with the above feelings that I sat down to watch Robert Icke's production of HAMLET at the Almeida and, for most of it's 3 + 3/4 hours running time, I was surprised at the clarity of vision despite the odd anachronistic elbow-in-the-eye.  But then as the climax of the play careered out of control it felt almost like Robert Icke just vomited out all the Director Theatre tricks he had managed to keep down up until then.

Of course nowadays a director feels the urge to give us a HAMLET at about the same time as a name actor edges into the spotlight to play it.  Andrew Scott, this is your 5 minute call... 5 minutes Mr Scott.  I have seen Andrew Scott only once before onstage - DESIGN FOR LIVING at the Old Vic in 2010 - so it was interesting to see him step up to have a go at the gloomy Dane.

For the most part he succeeded but his performance was let down by Icke having him burst into loud tears at the drop of a hat - yes we get it, he's still grieving for his father - and an annoying tendency to over-do the bellowing when Hamlet is riled up.  It's all the more absurd as he has only just told the Players: 

Oh, it offends me to the soul to hear a robustious periwig-pated fellow tear a passion to tatters, to very rags, to split the ears of the groundlings...

But for the most part Scott was very good at speaking the verse - the great soliloquies were not sung out like arias but delivered quietly, as if coming to him for the first time. Where he sits in my league of Hamlets will have to be seen, at the moment I suspect somewhere below Rory Kinnear and my all-time number one Ian Charleson.

That he ultimately did not move me is more the fault of Icke's production than Scott's actual performance.  As I said I enjoyed the first two acts much more than I was expecting and indeed was on board for most of the last act, but as I said above, Icke's botched handling of the climax seemed to almost undercut any chance for the actors to shine.

We had been forewarned to the elements of the botched ending - just as Ivo van Hove's over-reliance on Joni Mitchell's 'Blue' irked during his HEDDA GABLER so Icke's seemingly inexhaustible Bob Dylan collection here very quickly bored, Icke shared Nicholas Hytner's 2010 NT vision of Elsinore as a closed circuit surveillance state and occasionally a large screen dropped down to give us updates on Fortinbrass's progress, to show the security cameras picking up the ghostly presence of the dead King (which actually was very effective) and then to show the reactions of Claudius, Gertrude and Hamlet to "The Mousetrap" while they sat in the front row of the stalls.

This last bit of business was gimmicky and cumbersome (despite the fact that the handheld cameras showing the royal family also picked up the truly regal Vanessa Redgrave sitting behind them!) but it was distracting from the very fine performances of David Rintoul as the Player King and Marty Cruickshank as the Player Queen.  So the final scene... again the screen appeared to show the onstage duel (which we could see anyway) as Angus Wright and Juliet Stevenson as Claudius and Gertrude sat again in the front row - why??  With the duellists' faces covered up with fencing masks we really needed to concentrate on the King and Queen to get the undertow of emotions but this was totally lost.

But if this stage blocking ruined the personal dynamic between the characters at the climax of the show, the text was drowned out by the BLARING final Bob Dylan song - do you love Gertrude's "He’s fat, and scant of breath...the queen carouses to thy fortune, Hamlet" or her defiant retort to Claudius' command for her not to drink from the poisoned cup "I will, my lord. I pray you, pardon me"?  Well you won't hear them here as the bloody song blares out while Stevenson mouths the words.  At least her violent convulsions after being poisoned were more convincing than Gertrude's usual drop and die.

And it didn't end there - Hildegard Bechtler's stage design featured sliding glass panels with a hidden room beyond shrouded by curtains.  It immediately reminded me of Tom Scutt's low-fi set for the NT's MEDEA and with Bechtler's low-level leather couches, easy chairs and arty standard lamps, this is an Elsinore designed around 1981 Sunday supplement advertisements.  But at the end, rather than have Horatio (a short-changed Elliot Barnes-Worrall) and Hamlet exchange the famous last words as he dies, we had a musical fugue where the room beyond was revealed to show Polonious and Ophelia slow-dancing together as one by one the Ghost beckoned those recently dead - Laertes, Claudius, Gertrude - to stand up and join the party within...  all of which vanished to show that we had just been watching what was going on in Hamlet's mind as he died.  I am sure if Shakespeare had wanted a parade across the stage at this point he would have done it as in MACBETH and RICHARD III... so Icke, don't bloody make a long night longer just to be fucking contrary!

As I said, this awful version of the play's climax was all the more frustrating as up until then there had been much to enjoy, albeit in a production which seemed to be made up of moments and not a through line of dramatic tension - Scott's delicate handling of the speeches (when not ranting during Ophelia's funeral), the genuinely spooky glimpses of the Ghost on the security cameras as well as well-rounded performances from the always-dependable Peter Wight as a Polonius seemingly beset by early dementia, Barry Aird's sarcastic Gravedigger, Jessica Brown-Findlay's o'erthrown Ophelia, the earlier-mentioned Rintoul and Cruickshank and a suitably volatile Luke Thompson as Laertes.

Juliet Stevenson was a very good Gertrude, slowly coming to realize the truth behind Hamlet's rages; she proved again what a good actress can find within the otherwise frustratingly-thin role - in particular she delivered the drowning of Ophelia speech wonderfully.  Stevenson also provided the unexpected laugh of the evening when she ran out after the raving Ophelia only to go WHONGGG into the closed glass screen door.  However, in keeping with this unpredictable production, as good as Stevenson was, she only showed up how disastrously low-rent Angus Wright was as Claudius; he played it like it was a tech rehearsal.

So another stage HAMLET to add to the pile, my tenth in all.  I would be surprised if I see another production this year, but it is a play that I find endlessly facinating and profoundly moving when done right, alack not here however - Mr Scott, your director done rained on your parade.

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Julius Caesar: Cowards die many times...

Another previously unseen-on-stage Shakespeare play, another night at the Globe.  Yes, after finally getting to see TITUS ANDRONICUS earlier this year, we took advantage of the Globe's Roman season to see JULIUS CAESAR, which I had only ever seen in the 1953 film with Marlon Brando and James Mason.

Having now visited the Globe theatre more this year alone than any other year, I am getting used to the modus operandi of the theatre, always crowded foyer, the slightly insistent older volunteer ushers and that every play ends with a jig... even with half the characters dead at the end!

For this production we booked for the first level, looking over heads of the groundlings onto the stage.  Sounds perfect?  Of course not, not when you are stuck with a sulk of teenage girls who wanted to be anywhere but there and sighed and shuffled and whispered and looked at each other's watches and mooched about until even the most unflappable of Globe ushers was having a long muttered conversation with them.  Oh for them to have been dispatched as thoroughly as Caesar.

Despite this serious annoyance, I was gripped by Dominic Dromgoole's fast-paced and lucid production and now I understand how this play - like so many in Shakespeare's canon - has been reinterpreted and staged in countries and at times of political instability because within the play there are remarkable political insights, analysis and sly satire - how disheartening that political chicanery and spin have been around *that* long!

In a play of shifting loyalties between characters and audience alike, Julius Caesar is blithely ignorant to the ferment quietly brewing around him.  His friend Brutus is approached by Cassius and, playing on Brutus' strong republican beliefs, recruits him into an anti-Caesar conspiracy by citing the ruler's increasing domination of Rome.

Dismissing the warnings of his wife Calpurnia and a soothsayer, Caesar goes to the Forum and is waylaid by the conspirators who seize their moment and assassinate him.  Feeling justified in their actions they do not attempt to flee and even allow Caesar's friend Mark Antony to speak an oration over the dead leader on the Forum steps.  Blasé about his friendship with Caesar, Antony drops his mask and is consumed with angry grief when left alone.

In the play's most famous scene, Brutus addresses the crowd from the Forum steps, explaining rationally the conspirators' reasons for the killing which has the crowd denouncing Caesar and all he stood for.  Antony speaks next and in a dissembling, cunning speech he turns the fickle crowd against
the conspirators by pointing out how Caesar refused being Emperor three times and brought prosperity to Rome.  He shows them Caesar's will which has left money to every Roman citizen and in a coup-de-theatre uncovers Caesar's body for the crowd to inspect.  The crowd are by now whipped up into a murderous frenzy and they start a hunt against the conspirators.

How interesting to see this during the Party Conference season!  Antony's speech would fit in to any of them and is probably a basis for most of them.  What struck me as particularly modern is Shakespeare's use of repetition for Antony's speech, he raises each reason for Caesar to be revered then quotes what Brutus has just said "and yet Brutus is an honourable man".  He works through his rhetorical questions and lets his audience come to their own decision about Brutus' duplicity.

As in CORIOLANUS, Shakespeare has no time for the Roman rabble with their herd mentality, ignorance and savage partisanship.  Well that certainly hasn't changed, you only have to listen to an X FACTOR audience.

 

As I said it certainly helps that Dominic Dromgoole has directed such a fast-moving and lucid production, my only quibble being that the doubling and sometimes tripling of the cast makes it sometimes a bit confusing to keep up with who's who, particularly at the end when the battle scenes between Antony and the conspirators come and go so swiftly.

There were good unshowy performances from a hardworking cast.  George Irving was well-cast as Caesar, his avuncular air hiding his wariness at those he suspected of being against him while Anthony Howell was good as Cassius, the chief conspirator against Caesar.  He was well-partnered by Tom McKay as Brutus, the good man who does wrong thinking he is doing right.  His scenes with Howell were particularly enjoyable, particularly in the scene where Brutus and Cassius argue over the rights and wrongs of their actions before going into battle.  The two actors were so similar in look and style that it was like watching two sides of the same coin.

Luke Thompson was a fine Antony suggesting the many shades of his character - the easy-going, sporty, favourite of Caesar, his dissembling nature and finally the avenging warrior.  As I have said, his playing of Antony's funeral oration was excellent.

Katy Stephens was an impassioned Calpurnia, Christopher Logan gave Casca's speech about Caesar refusing the title of Emperor the right air of sneering disdain, William Mannering was very good in his several roles and I also liked Joe Jameson as the chilly Octavius, his wary relationship with Mark Antony already sowing the seeds of mistrust which Shakespeare further seven years later in ANTONY AND CLEOPATRA.  I also liked the look of Jonathan Fensom's Elizabethan costumes.

With one more visit booked for the Globe this year, I think my wariness of that venue can be said to be exorcised - now if only we can do something about those school parties...