HAMLET
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Our highly 'alternative' version of Hamlet played for four nights to appreciative houses in December 2007. The production was packed with arresting and surprising twists: for a start, the audience, on entering the theatre by the side gallery, find themselves on stage filing past the body of the old king in a solemn lying in state. Daniel Smith as Hamlet then starts proceedings by giving his fellow actors the speech normally reserved for the 'players'—'Speak the speech as I pronounced it to you, trippingly on the tongue...'
A bank of enormous LCD monitors suspended above the stage shows a news report on the swearing-in of the new president, or rather king, Claudius, who then announces his marriage to the previous king's wife at a West Wing style press conference; the paparazzi mob Hamlet as he enters, leading to an uncomfortable confrontation with a photographer. Claudius then manipulates the moment into a photo-opportunity to make himself look as good as possible.
After Hamlet's mother persuades him to stay on in Elsinore rather than go back to university in Wittenberg, Hamlet is so depressed that he very nearly blows his brains out. But news of the appearance of a ghost in the likeness of his father galvanises his interest. The ghost is a silent actor bathed in mist and flickering greenish light and voiced by the whole cast in a highly mannered and disconcerting chorus: the departed soul seems to be clamouring from the depths of hell and trying to find his own voice amidst the mocking spirits all around. They even break into gales of demoniacal laughter on the line 'the serpent that did sting thy father's life now wears his crown'. Hamlet therefore has every reason to distrust the spectre, unsure if it is really his father's tormented soul or a fabrication of the devil.
When the ghost tells him that he had been murdered by his own brother, Claudius, Hamlet is instantly prepared to believe it as it fits completely with his instinctual loathing of his uncle. He now feels cut off from even his closest friends since he cannot share this new knowledge with anyone. He breaks off with his girlfriend, Ophelia, feigning madness as a cover, but continues to entrust his inner thoughts to a video diary (which we see relayed to the video screens). Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, two of Hamlet's friends summoned by Claudius to investigate his 'madness', take him to a night-club in an attempt to make him relax and tell them the truth, but Hamlet sees through them almost at once.
The second appearance of the ghost is even more shocking. Hamlet has been summoned to his mother's bedroom to explain his wild behaviour: it is a setup, with Polonius, the king's chief of staff, lurking behind a curtain to overhear them. Hamlet hears a sound, thinks it is the king, and stabs Polonius through the curtain. The body falls and collapses behind the bed. Then, just as Hamlet has brought this mother to tears of remorse, Polonius staggers to his feet momentarily, bleeding and spewing blood, then falls dead—revealing the ghost of Hamlet's father shimmering behind...
Several scenes and speeches were cut: as well as the battlements scene at the beginning, we lost Reynaldo and the arrival of the players. The most famous line in the play was unashamedly butchered too: Hamlet enters lit only by a cigarette lighter held by his face, announces 'To be... or...' then simply blows out the flame, plunging the audience into complete darkness as a tangible substitute for the words 'not to be', which the audience supply in their own heads. Ophelia's speech to her father about Hamlet's madness was replaced with a silent scene in which Hamlet almost assaults her with his video camera; Gertrude's account of Ophelia's death becomes a TV news flash with footage of a cordoned-off crime scene by a lake. At various times the video screens also show news updates on Fortinbras' invasion of Poland, and towards the end of the play, CCTV footage of Fortinbras' men infiltrating Elsinore. The whole set turns into a TV studio for the performance of the play-within-a-play, complete with a mixing gallery at the rear of the stage, though the figures behind the glass were in fact the real Stage Manager and ASM.
The ending is spectacular and brutal. Laertes, the brother of Ophelia and son of Polonius, returns to Elsinore seeking revenge for his murdered father, only to witness Ophelia being carted off unceremoniously by men in white coats. After witnessing the burial of Ophelia wrapped in black bin-liners in a shallow grave, Laertes explodes with fury when Hamlet re-enters the scene. The fight sequences were dirty and uncompromising; the actors had received professional training for the expertly choreographed fencing duel at the end. Laertes dies bloodily, as does Claudius, practically drowned in his own poisoned wine. After Hamlet dies, Fortinbras' army invades Elsinore: we hear the cry 'Grenade!' and men rush in from all over the theatre as a deafening barrage of explosions rocks the stage. And this is no milksop Fortinbras—after hearing Horatio's moving account of the fall of Elsinore, he cynically knocks him out cold with his pistol. Members of the CCF played the army and brought a chilling realism to the final scene.
All the cast and crew had worked exceptionally hard to bring this ambitious and technically challenging show to the stage. Of the performances, Keziah Lewis courageously presented Ophelia's vulnerability and madness in a portrayal so frank that it was sometimes difficult to watch; Izzy Watts succeeded with the considerable challenge of playing the queen with grace and assurance; Hadley Smith gave us a storming, heart-breaking Laertes and Adam Lawrence's Polonius combined ruthlessness with the necessary degree of slightly addled prolixity. Declan Doyle as Claudius was entirely convincing as an authoritative but deeply flawed president, domineering, manipulative but eaten away inside by self-loathing and remorse. Meanwhile Dan Smith's Hamlet was described by one who ought to know as the single best drama performance seen at the school in the last ten years. The beauty and clarity of his diction combined with an awe-inspiring temperamental fire and a terrible awareness of his character's inner agony, which he could barely contain from spilling over in speech after speech. Even the more comical moments of his feigned madness had something indescribably nasty about them. One has to feel sorry for Rosencrantz and Guildenstern and all the others who happened to cross his path!