Thoughts on Hamlet

Now cracks a noble heart...

Though the Lord Lackbeards' all-female version of Hamlet at the Pop-Up Globe was not my favourite version of the play, there were still many good things about it and much food for thought.

It was (mostly) a swift, clean production - some judicious cutting of the text reduced the play to just under three hours (including a fifteen minute interval). As is often the case, the whole Fortinbras sub-plot was cut, but they kept Rosenkrantz and Guildenstern (famously cut by Olivier in his 1948 film) and the Second Gravedigger, another character who is very often dispatched with. The cast was small, numbering only eight, but some clever doubling meant that I never really noticed this until they took their bows at the end. They did a good job of using the huge stage, relying mainly on the language and movement to fill the space rather than going overboard with props and non-diegetic music - which, after the musical overload of Antony and Cleopatra, was something of a relief and quite refreshing.

The performance dragged a little at the beginning but picked up speed after Act I - they suddenly appeared to realise that actors finishing a scene could exit by one stage door as those beginning the next entered via the opposite side of the stage. Doing this, rather leaving the stage bare between each scene, keeps the action moving along nicely (Romeo and Juliet and Twelfth Night have both got this down to a fine art). There was a very awkward pause in the action in the middle of the ghost scene - at "Go on, I'll follow thee," Hamlet and the ghost exited the theatre through the groundlings and then took a long while to re-appear! As I was right at the back of the upper gallery, where admittedly the view is not great, perhaps I missed something, but the rest of the audience seemed a bit bemused too.

The actor playing Hamlet, clad appropriately in inky black, looked to be about seven months' pregnant - which, predictably, drew quite a snigger at "How pregnant sometimes his replies are!" As previously mentioned, the doubling was neatly done - Claudius doubled as the ghost, which brought out nicely what Hamlet calls "The counterfeit presentment of two brothers." Horatio doubled as Guildenstern (or was it Rosenkrantz?) - one Hamlet's faithful friend, the other a faithless one. A pipe-smoking, newspaper-reading Polonius who rather stole the show re-appeared (sans pipe and newspaper) after his untimely demise as the priest who buries Ophelia. Since Polonius arguably helps drive Ophelia to madness and death, this seemed fitting too.

One problem with this production was that several of the actors were not very audible. This was probably partly because I was right at the top of the playhouse, in the upper gallery, but also because some of the actors' voices just did not carry as well as men's tend to. Nobody had any trouble hearing Polonius, and Hamlet was fine too, but some of the other characters were less than distinct.

Someone once said that Hamlet is actually a very funny play, and this is to some extent true - especially with Polonius, who in this production drew many a laugh. But, as with Romeo and Juliet, I did feel that the actors and director had chosen to emphasise the comedy at the expense of the tragedy. (One reason I like the production of Twelfth Night so much is that the poignancy of Sir Andrew Aguecheek and Malvolio is well brought out, confronted rather than glossed over. The first time I saw the production it did appear to be played more as a straight comedy, but now they seem to have found a good balance between the comedy and the pathos. At the school matinee yesterday the children seemed especially receptive to this and there was real sympathy for both characters. But I digress.)

The two gravediggers in Act V Scene I made a valiant effort to involve the groundlings during the argument over whether Ophelia drowned herself willingly or not. "Here lies the water," said the Second Gravedigger, pointing at one of the groundlings and gesticulating for her to mime 'water;' "here stands the man," pointing to another. The speech continues, "If the man go to this water and drown himself, it is, will he nill he, he goes, mark you that. But if the water come to him and drown him, he drowns not himself." Unfortunately it backfired somewhat, because, though the lady mimed water drowning the man with enthusiasm, he just stood there, refusing either to drown himself or to be drowned!

The fencing scene at the end of Act V, which is surely supposed to be the climax of the entire play, seemed oddly tame - possibly because it is not advisable to fence with gusto when one is in the last trimester of pregnancy...? Once everybody had died and then got up again, I did not really like the closing dance - I have read somewhere that this was common practice at the original Globe after all plays, including tragedies, but it just felt wrong for Hamlet... the crowning insult, however, was the stream of bubbles floating down from the playhouse roof to the stage and yard below. Bubbles! For Hamlet!! I think not.

Still, I am glad to have seen the play performed in a space similar to that in which it was originally staged. Although there was a brilliant stage version of Hamlet at the Musgrove theatre a few years ago (and, of course, the recent Benedict Cumberbatch production at the Barbican), it seems to be a play that tends to be filmed more often than staged, meaning that we are often presented with celebrity actors, sweeping vistas of Elsinor and an array of special effects for the ghost. Often - as with the Kenneth Branagh and Mel Gibson film versions (and perhaps also with the Barbican one*) - these become the focus and the play becomes too 'busy,' with the beauty of the language swamped or simply overlooked. (I like Olivier's film because he does not lose the language.) So it was good to see how, on a huge bare stage, the language has to be the driving force behind the play, and - even better - how it is entirely capable of doing so.

Good night, sweet prince,

And flights of angels sing thee to thy rest.

* Being in NZ, I could not see this live, but I did see a filmed version of a live performance. From what I heard and read of the production, a huge part of its success (in terms of tickets sold) was the simple fact that Cumberbatch was in it.