Hamlet – the play, the character; the phenomenon – needs
no introduction. In Sydney
this year alone, we have been offered at least four productions in one form or
another, and this is the third I have seen. In many respects, Montague
Basement’s production is the strongest – and certainly the boldest – but it
could be bolder, more daring; more Hamletian.
Directed by Saro
Lusty-Cavallari, this Hamlet is “surrounded by technologies as old as [himself]:”
hundreds of VHS tapes and several old televisions dot the space, hinting at both
the endless surveillance we are so used to seeing in the Hamlet story, but also
his need for a father (figure), someone he can only truly find through stories;
stories which he has grown up with, stories which make sense of the events in
his life. Using a heavily edited text, Lusty-Cavallari has trimmed the normally
three-plus hours of Hamlet down to a
mere ninety minutes; gone too, are more than several characters, including
Gertrude, Rosencrantz, Guildenstern, Laertes, the gravedigger et al. Most are cut
outright, while others (Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, for example) are
conflated into existing characters (like Horatio). Rather than restricting the
scale of Hamlet, what these cuts and
shifts do is open up the possibilities of the play to explore new ground, new
relationships, to look again at the play and try to work out what exactly is
going on inside it. “Because Hamlet is so consistently held on a pedestal of
individuality that disconnects it from any theatrical or literary tradition or
influence, we too often lose sight of Shakespeare’s very conscious
interrogation of [the revenge tragedy] genre.” If anything, ninety minutes
seems slightly too long for this production; perhaps some more – smaller – cuts
could be made throughout the text to fillet it down to a lean and taught
seventy minutes, to create a more furious and mercurial play.
Right from the
beginning – the ‘bad quarto’ version of the ‘To be’ speech – this Hamlet is deliciously
off-kilter from our usual expectations. As played by Christian
Byers, Hamlet is mercurial but distracted, caught in his own world,
constantly pacing around the space, hands waving in front of him, trying to
make sense of everything; if only he could. Our first real encounter with the ghost
(voiced by Ewen
Leslie) is cleverly evoked through the bank of television screens, and is the
catalyst for Hamlet’s journey; rather than coming halfway through the first
half of the play, we encounter the ghost right at the top of the show, and it’s
a choice which pays off throughout the rest of the production as we see Hamlet
deviate from and return to his intended purpose. While Zach
Beavon-Collin’s Horatio is downplayed, there is a touching glimpse of what
might have been in his relationship with Ophelia (perhaps following on from a
suggestion by Jean
Betts). Lulu Howes’ Ophelia is perhaps the strongest character in what is a
rather feminist Hamlet; not only does
she stand up to Hamlet (and actually – understandably – slap him at the end of
the ‘nunnery’ scene), but her madness is here made all-too understandable. Patrick
Morrow’s Polonius is pitch-perfect (and certainly doesn’t overstay his welcome
as in many other productions), and his death is brutal, swift, and harrowing.
Robert Boddington’s Claudius may seem at first like a toothless tiger, but
there’s an undercurrent of yearning to understand Hamlet’s affliction which sits
quite nicely within this production.
There are some
very effective moments in this Hamlet
– Polonius’ death and Ophelia’s madness (and death) which immediately follows
it, and for the first time they truly make sense of each other; Hamlet’s
performance of ‘The Murder of Gonzago,’ where he himself plays both the
poisoner and the poisoned, flipping (astonishingly) acrobatically between the
two; ‘The Mousetrap,’ which is the best use of The Lion King I have ever seen… While Lusty-Cavallari’s cuts mean
we do lose some of the narrative closure of the story, namely the duel at the
end of the play, what we are left with is a more humanist and quietly affecting
moment – Horatio alone, reading a letter left by Hamlet, dictating the terms of
his remembrance.
While the pacing
sometimes lags for a scene or two, this Hamlet
is ultimately one which mirrors Hamlet himself – it feels alive, dangerous; unpredictable. If
you want to see a Hamlet that will
play out very much to your expectations, go to the opera house; if you want a Hamlet which is more particular in its concerns, more ultimately
concerned with embracing the Hamlet-ness of Hamlet
– that is, “a cruel, frustrating, and inconsistent play… that does not offer
the discernable logic of great revenge tragedies or beloved cartoons” – then
this is definitely for you. It has been a pleasure to watch Montague Basement go
from strength to strength in their productions, gaining confidence (and
audacity), finding and sharpening their voice, in the space of fifteen months. If
the teaser we get in the program to this production is anything to go by, 2016
looks to be another cracker of a year for this uncompromising collective.
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