Hamlet
I saw Hamlet for the first time on Saturday, and I have been left with lots of thoughts and a burning desire to find my GCSE English teacher and camp out on his doorstep until he gives me a terms worth of Eng Lit lessons on the subject.
I saw the production at the Royal Exchange in Manchester with Maxine Peake as Hamlet. If you haven't been to this theatre before it is an interesting building, with the theatre itself a module inside the exchange building. The performance area is in the round, with multiple entrances and a central playing area, a ground floor and two tiers of seating, giving an intimate feel to performances.
When I said that I hadn't seen Hamlet before, it was a bit misleading. I've seen the David Tennant version which was filmed a few years ago, and watched it over several evenings one Christmas. I don't remember it having a particular impact on me, and although I can picture a couple of the scenes, it is more that I can see the actors and the staging, rather than the story. I am a little baffled by this, but I was possibly listening to the voices and language rather than the story, if you see what I mean. The main result was that although I knew the gist of the play (Hamlet sees ghost of dead father, Gertrude has married the chap who killed her husband and Hamlet isn't happy, Ophelia drowns, Hamlet dies), I didn't know exactly what was coming next.
The play was gender balanced, in that the cast was 50:50 split. Maxine Peake played Hamlet as male, but other characters were female (Polonius became Polonia, Rosencrantz was a woman). I am not sure whether my lack of expectations helped here, but none of the characters felt forced or strange in their adapted roles. Maxine Peake was superb, and gender was completely irrelevant - I wasn't thinking about a woman playing a man, I was just caught up in the story.
The ghost scenes were very well done, with flickering lightbulbs and an electrical hum indicating when the spirit was near. Really very eerie, without needing to show the actual ghost until a key scene, and the graveyard scene used old clothes as earth to great effect. Minimal scenery and maximum impact.
Ophelia's mad scene was amazing. I have no idea how it is usually interpreted, but I was convinced that the character had been raped. Her 'madness' contrasted to Hamlet's, and is making me think of the way Macbeth and Lady Macbeth's drive switches. Lady Macbeth is urging her husband forward, when he lets his ambition take over and chases onwards she draws back in horror. Hamlet is 'mad', but when Ophelia goes mad and dies, it pushes him back to sanity?
The final scene was terrific, but I felt so sorry for Horatio left alone among the corpses. I did wonder how he was going to talk himself out of that when CSI Elsinore showed up, but apparently in the full version the Norwegians invade at that point, neatly evading matters for him. 'Goodnight sweet prince' is a beautiful and heartbreaking final line - he still loves his friend, and sees him as a victim of the situation as well as a perpetrator.
TL:DR I saw Hamlet and can't stop thinking about it, so I typed a not particularly coherent post about it.
Finally, I give you Hamlet the Text Adventure. If you have even a vague knowledge of Shakepeare it is hugely entertaining. http://rdouglasjohnson.com/hamlet/
I saw the production at the Royal Exchange in Manchester with Maxine Peake as Hamlet. If you haven't been to this theatre before it is an interesting building, with the theatre itself a module inside the exchange building. The performance area is in the round, with multiple entrances and a central playing area, a ground floor and two tiers of seating, giving an intimate feel to performances.
When I said that I hadn't seen Hamlet before, it was a bit misleading. I've seen the David Tennant version which was filmed a few years ago, and watched it over several evenings one Christmas. I don't remember it having a particular impact on me, and although I can picture a couple of the scenes, it is more that I can see the actors and the staging, rather than the story. I am a little baffled by this, but I was possibly listening to the voices and language rather than the story, if you see what I mean. The main result was that although I knew the gist of the play (Hamlet sees ghost of dead father, Gertrude has married the chap who killed her husband and Hamlet isn't happy, Ophelia drowns, Hamlet dies), I didn't know exactly what was coming next.
The play was gender balanced, in that the cast was 50:50 split. Maxine Peake played Hamlet as male, but other characters were female (Polonius became Polonia, Rosencrantz was a woman). I am not sure whether my lack of expectations helped here, but none of the characters felt forced or strange in their adapted roles. Maxine Peake was superb, and gender was completely irrelevant - I wasn't thinking about a woman playing a man, I was just caught up in the story.
The ghost scenes were very well done, with flickering lightbulbs and an electrical hum indicating when the spirit was near. Really very eerie, without needing to show the actual ghost until a key scene, and the graveyard scene used old clothes as earth to great effect. Minimal scenery and maximum impact.
Ophelia's mad scene was amazing. I have no idea how it is usually interpreted, but I was convinced that the character had been raped. Her 'madness' contrasted to Hamlet's, and is making me think of the way Macbeth and Lady Macbeth's drive switches. Lady Macbeth is urging her husband forward, when he lets his ambition take over and chases onwards she draws back in horror. Hamlet is 'mad', but when Ophelia goes mad and dies, it pushes him back to sanity?
The final scene was terrific, but I felt so sorry for Horatio left alone among the corpses. I did wonder how he was going to talk himself out of that when CSI Elsinore showed up, but apparently in the full version the Norwegians invade at that point, neatly evading matters for him. 'Goodnight sweet prince' is a beautiful and heartbreaking final line - he still loves his friend, and sees him as a victim of the situation as well as a perpetrator.
TL:DR I saw Hamlet and can't stop thinking about it, so I typed a not particularly coherent post about it.
Finally, I give you Hamlet the Text Adventure. If you have even a vague knowledge of Shakepeare it is hugely entertaining. http://rdouglasjohnson.com/hamlet/